Tell me your truth.

Hi, my name is C. and I suffer from an incurable illness called introspection. I think a lot, I analyze a lot, I even dream a lot. In a certain way overanalyzing is a kind of addiction. Writing is the cure; it helps me sort things out. I always have a pen and a notebook nearby, I scribble in the empty pages of a book when reading, I write in the empty spaces of a magazine, on the back of an envelope. I cannot fall asleep if I have a question trotting in my head. Sometimes it’s just a few words (I love the sound and taste of new words), sometimes it’s a quote, sometimes it’s a feeling or a thought that won’t leave me until I put them down in words. Recently I started a blog in Swedish.

One of my best friends asked me why I decided to expose myself on this “blog-thing”. After a couple of hours of intense introspection (joke!) I ended up with a few answers and am choosing to share this one with you: I have stories to tell! I think sharing them might help someone think a bit differently and see some old truth from another angle. I think we all have these stories that are really hard to tell and that we’ve rerun a thousand times in our mind. And every time we come out of a period of dissection we find new reasons for why they should not be told. You know the kind of stories we’re not sure what people will think about.  The stories that will get us exposed and criticized. And mostly, the stories that scare us because we don’t know how WE are going to feel once (or if) we share them.

Over the last few years, during my coaching sessions or in my private life, many people have told me their story knowing I would always listen, often ask questions and sometimes give a piece of advice.  Once the story is out of them and dressed up in words something magic happens, like finding the lost key to a secret door. It is such a relief when you finally share a story that was hard to tell because you were afraid to be judged. You realize that it wasn’t that bad at all, that you cannot be that weird if at least one person can hear you and relate to something you’ve said.  It’s not even about your story being understood, it’s about it being accepted. You feel great, all of sudden a weight is off your shoulders, your heart is beating at a safer pace and the earth keeps on revolving around the sun.

What these happier people have in common is that they tell true stories. By true I mean the storyteller’s truth, based on his or her personal experiences. There are always at least two sides of a story. What we remember, feel and tell is filtered and colored through the lenses we use to see and measure our past, present and future. We can never really measure our stories with others’ even if they may seem similar. Which also means that we cannot judge others’ whys and hows (and they cannot fairly judge us) because we never use the exact same filters. We cannot accuse someone of remembering wrong just because we don’t remember the same way. Take children born in the same family, they can have completely different memories of the same period of time. One of them can describe a moment as happy while the other one remembers it as very sad. The same goes for a divorcing couple where one part thinks their last 10 years together was a misery while the other one didn’t even see the divorce coming. None of them needs to be a liar, they probably experienced it differently and their “happy” ten years ago was not their “happy” today but it was probably “happy enough” then, otherwise they would have done something about it. They simply don’t talk about the same “happy” (feeling) even if they speak the same language.

For me truth is being honest with myself about what I want, need and feel. Not because I plan for a possible outcome or because I have an agenda with my story. So is it always good to tell the truth then? This might be a way of asking if the ends can justify the means. Slippery path. My answer to that is: before telling your story, consider what you hope to accomplish by doing so. Who and what do you do it for? Are you clear enough with the consequences it might have? If you use your truth with the intention to hurt it can be extremely damaging, not only to those you wish to hurt but even to yourself. If you tell your truth because you sincerely want to clarify your intentions and feelings on a specific situation then I think the truth is good to tell. And let this be clear, I am not defending lies. I am simply saying that there are as many shades of truth as there are participants in a story. Religions and fables of all cultures abound in illustrations of evil consequences of telling lies but not many people take in consideration the outcomes of thinking that truth only has one aspect.

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
~ Marcus Aurelius