5 – Tell Me What I Need To Hear

1/10/21

Almost six years ago, I got some advice that has stuck with me. I was a freshman in college – punchy and self-absorbed at nineteen, I was just beginning to give it a go with writing. It wasn’t as much that I thought I was good right away – more like that “big fish, small pond” syndrome had followed me from high school, and I had seldom received honest constructive criticism up until then. I sent a poem to a professor who I really admired – probably the first cohesive bit of writing I had put together, and I felt like it was terrifyingly vulnerable. His words humbled me and confused me – he (oh so kindly, I’ll add) made me realize that I had no idea how to access anything inside me that would be truly terrifyingly vulnerable. One of the standout pieces from what he told me was,”Say more of what you mean – see if the words you’re writing are working to obscure the feelings behind them.” 
Absurd, right? Me? Repress emotion? Repress emotion out of deep-seated fear and lack of self-awareness?  No, no way.
Besides the obvious writing-specific help that it was to me, I think that this advice has stuck with me for so many years because of its honesty-in-kindness – an aspect of relationships that we often miss, I think. His words were hard to hear, but the challenge buried in them has become a foundational pursuit of my life and my work. That is the power inherent in risk. The real-life truth is that I can be ugly sometimes, and so can you, and I wonder about the growth opportunities we miss out on because we choose to tell each other what we want to hear rather than what we need to hear. We don’t speak up because we’re afraid of backlash, because we’re worried about which words to use, because it’s difficult. In my life, I want pride to be so absent that people don’t hesitate to offer up honesty-in-kindness to me. I want to love so radically that people know my heart when I offer the same up to them. I’m chasing unbarred, uncomfortable truth – kinda like when someone tells you that your fly is unzipped, you know?
 
Lightly,
Leah