It has always been difficult to start writing. I sit down with a cup of coffee and full of motivation, but within a few minutes, I’m disheartened enough to quit.
I have competing motivations to write. I want to be honest, to articulate things as I see them. I also want to be kind and fair, to afford people the same grace as I’ve been afforded countless times in my life.
But what does it mean to ‘be nice,’ anyway? In the rural Midwest, I was raised to believe that if you didn’t have anything nice to say, you didn’t say anything at all. Life there prioritized social harmony—conflict avoidance by another name—over honesty. It’s this social harmony that kept me in the closet until my 20s. It’s this social harmony that kept a close family member’s addiction to painkillers a secret until just recently. It’s this social harmony that leads to a lot of guilt and shame.
In my 20s, as I moved out of the Midwest and came out of the closet, I swung wildly in the other direction. I began to prioritize truth over harmony, and spoke my mind to anyone that would listen. It felt good to finally say what I thought, though I stopped caring how what I thought might make other people feel. I have hurt a lot of people by prioritizing ‘the truth.’ Yet it felt good to finally say what I felt needed to be said.
In my late 30s, I’m struggling to integrate these two approaches. I do not want to hurt anyone or make them feel shame or guilt—the very things that burdened me much of my life. But I also want to speak the truth, and sometimes the truth hurts. Life is at times painful and uncomfortable, and anyone that thinks otherwise—or attempts to live their lives avoiding pain or discomfort—is delusional.
Perhaps we should all be allowed to live in our delusions. Maybe that’s a small kindness we can offer each other, to be allowed to live in the little worlds we’ve constructed to avoid the confusing, scary reality that A) our actions have consequences, B) free will might not exist, and C) death is inevitable.
But the most meaningful relationships I have are with people that don’t allow me my delusions, but gently shake me free of them.