A few nights ago, I was watching a sketch comedy show and in one particular segment, one of the protagonists had just been dumped by his girlfriend, who’d told him flat out: “I don’t love you anymore.”

The gist of the sketch was that the guy in question was desperately trying to read something else into this statement—maybe what she meant was that she still actually loved him—aided by random strangers who kept chiming in to the conversation (aka, the interwebz, anyone?), while his friend was trying to reason with him: it’s hard to get more concise and to the point than “I don’t love you anymore.”

This got me thinking at how much time we spend reading into things, and how much energy we can spend dissecting bits and pieces of interactions.

We truly devote a lot of intellectual and emotional power attempting to discover veiled meanings. But wouldn’t life be a lot simpler if we were all more straightforward?

Imagine a world where our dealings with each other weren’t veiled by innumerable layers of pretense or trying to appear in a certain light.

Why do we keep getting in our own way?

WE LIE TO OURSELVES ALL THE TIME

I think that one of the biggest issues we face is that we’re often incapable of being honest with ourselves. Between what we feel but think we shouldn’t be feeling and what we believe we should feel but aren’t exactly sure if we are, we’re creating heaps of confusion within our own heart and mind.

Is it a surprise that we can’t communicate clearly, then?

We need to be extremely honest with ourselves first in order to be forthright with each other. It means we must be concise with our thoughts so that we can be concise with our words.

This takes a bit of work.

I’d love to tell you that you can magically make it happen, but after spending a lifetime contorting our thoughts and feelings to make them fit outward criteria, let’s just say the magic only happens after the work.

SAY WHAT YOU MEAN AND MEAN WHAT YOU SAY

Learning to actually say what we mean, just like meaning what we say, isn’t particularly complicated work per se. But simple work doesn’t mean easy work.

First, we have to learn to hit the pause button.

This may feel awkward at the beginning, since we’re so used to being reactive instead of being introspective. But it’s chiefly by turning our attention in that we are enabled to do that crucial work.

Situation X arises —> Impulse reaction —> Pause button

This is precisely where the introspection comes in.

What exactly is our impulse reaction? If we haven’t questioned this in a while, we may even be a bit surprised, now that we’re looking at it from a slightly more critical distance, that we’re reacting as we are.

Once we’re able to name our reaction, we need to clearly name the feelings that are behind it.

Interestingly, this is where we may surprise ourselves and realize that our reaction has little to do with how we fundamentally feel. We’ve just conditioned ourselves to react a certain way, be it because we believe it’s the appropriate reaction, because of perceived social pressure, or because we’re just so disconnected from our emotions that we don’t even know what we feel anymore.

Simple work. Messy work. Worthwhile work.

So now that we’ve reconnected with what we’re feeling, what do we do? We learn to state it, simply. First to ourselves, and then to others.

This is an extremely vulnerable process. Even when we’re working on being transparent with no one but ourselves, losing the structure of pretense behind which we’ve been operating so long leaves us feeling naked.

But think of the baggage we no longer have to drag!

A CASE FOR AUTHENTICITY

How liberating would it be to live in a world where we all operate from a place of transparency?

Of course, I’m very aware that it will probably always be a work in progress. as I write this, I can recall several recent interactions with others that went as follows:

Other person: “Well, you said X, which means that you were thinking Y!”
Me: “Why would you say that? If I said X, it’s because I was thinking X.”
Other person: “…”
Me: “Don’t worry, if I ever think Y, I’ll tell you it’s Y.”
Other person: “…”

Contrary to commonly held beliefs, stating what we think and what we feel doesn’t mean falling into drama. The idea is to state it simply. If a situation makes us sad, we say “this makes me sad”; if a situation makes us angry, we state “this makes me angry”.

Simply.

There’s a tremendous difference between transparency and drama. Transparency isn’t self-seeking. It’s, if anything, pretty neutral. We state facts, as seen from our lens, without relying on other inferring hidden meanings.

Happiness is when what you think, what
you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mahatma Gandhi

Of course, choosing more authentic, transparent interactions doesn’t mean that everything suddenly comes up roses. If your definition of happiness is skipping about throwing confetti and rainbows, you may feel that it comes up short!

But I think that happiness can simply mean alignment; a grounding force that helps us through both joyful and more difficult times.

And when the confetti and rainbows do show up? We no longer need to question their motives!

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