Getting Through Each Day: Honesty

Earlier today, I was informed on a review that I wrote a short time ago that I was wrong when I made a statement (the bread and butter of internet criticisms) and that “what I meant” was something completely different.

Now that first part, it’s easy to let that roll off my back. It’s a pretty common thing to find, and I often use that sort of phrasing unfairly when I am simply disagreeing with an opinion, not meaning to discount it or take it for granted. Everyone has the right to their thoughts and ideas, whether we agree with them or not.

But when you start to question why I wrote what I did, suggest that I was meaning some other, random, hidden message I squirreled away for the observant reader, or that I was too fucking stupid to write the sentence in a way that properly expressed the point you’re trying to make, that’s when I start to lose my temper.

In my life, I pride myself on the fact that I try to be as earnest with everyone as possible about any and all aspects of my life. I’ve never been one to hide things personally, and I see no need to. Sure, I’ve been one to make mistakes, but I’d rather admit to them and allow myself to progress as an individual that hide them and try to forget they ever happened.

The only exception to this rule of honesty is if I’m questioned about the personal or private information of someone else, which in good conscious I cannot and will not share. Rather, I’ll make statements explaining how it’s not my business or place to share that sort of thing, which is still true but not in the open way I’ve tried to form my own life. Just because this is how I live doesn’t mean others need to be subjected to the same lifestyle against their wishes.

This policy started only a few months ago, when my ex, while walking through the woods with me one afternoon, made an important observation, but for this to make sense, I need to explain a certain theme I apply to my life.

Over the years, I’ve felt like I’ve been surrounded by those who value who they want or pretend to be over who they are, putting on faces and acting friendly. It’s a tiresome game that I learned to hate as early as high school, often applying the idea of masks to the situation. Everyone wears masks, hiding their true selves and intentions, attempting to present who they believe is their ideal selves rather than face the flawed person they actually are.

So as we walked through the woods, having a heated discussion over various events that preceded and came after our breakup, I grew rather frustrated and angry at the discovery that, once again, I had been lied to by my ex. At this point, it feels like a rather common occurrence, and one that actively contributed to the end of the relationship. I had begun referencing masks, an idea my ex was far too familiar with, when another hiker crossed our path, asking how our days were. Being polite, I quickly straightened myself up, put on a smile, and let him know I was having great day, and I hoped he did too. As we moved out of earshot, my ex made a statement that will stay with me for the rest of my life:

“You know, for someone who hates masks, you have a pretty good one.”

That simple phrase struck me in a way I cannot fully express, shaking the core of my understanding of how I presented myself.

A common joke in college, being an English major, is that half of my degree was the art of bullshitting. Many of the papers were composed not of my opinions but of those that were expected of me, occasionally asking us to feel profound things that, simply put, I didn’t. Similarly, I had grown rather skilled at lying, making my way in and out of shitty situations through the use of a few falsehoods. Having always had a way with words and people, I never found this to be entirely difficult or challenging.

Yet, prior to this I had never stopped to consider the moral implications of lying, what it is a tool, and what it actively does to us, as people and as a society. Many people use the excuse that they lie because they are protecting others, but that is a heinous and selfish falsehood. Lying is used to protect the liar for one simple truth;

Lies are made to prevent or alter the natural evolution of the status quo. Or, in other words, lies are used to maintain a self-serving status quo.

This is more easily applied to those lies that reference things that try to disguise events or facts that have already occurred but supposedly hadn’t, attempting to maintain and preserve the current status quo rather than allowing it to evolve naturally. It’s surprising how far people are willing to go to hide from that change, to prevent the intense shift of a social paradigm. If such a lie needs to be perpetuated, clearly change needs to occur in order for anyone to get better.

Meanwhile, there are those lies that look to actively change what the status quo is, altering the facts in a way that makes it a catalyst for change. These, I find, are much rarer to come across, but often more damaging in the long-term, shaping lives moving forward based on lies that should have had no impact to begin with. Ultimately, they still maintain the same problems; rather than be honest about the life everyone currently exists in, the liar attempts to alter perspectives to present their idealized status quo rather than what should actually come to pass.

In either instance, it’s clear that lies can be largely damaging, sometimes catastrophic, to the lives of those that are on the receiving end, shaping perspectives and plans that are ultimately fruitless due to them not having all the correct information.

And yes, no one is perfect, me least of all. I still lie time to time, often unintentionally, like a habit. But when I catch myself doing it, I actively try and force myself to correct the lie in the moment rather than letting it fester and perpetuate.

So yes, while some people may not agree with or like what I say, I’d rather be honest and straightforward with those around me than actively contribute to harmful views or impressions of the world at large. Even if that means getting harassed on the internet by strangers. (I imagine that, given time, I’ll find some rather interesting comments on this post in particular).

Getting Through Each Day: Childhood

Children have always been a large part of my life, but it’s only until recently that I’ve fully come to appreciate the full weight of that statement.

I worked as a camp counselor for four years, specializing in the youngest age group (seven- to ten-year-olds).

I’ve always been the family member to adore all my new baby nieces and nephews, helping however I can when I see them, even with diaper changes.

I babysit my friend’s two-year-old on a weekly basis, a little cutie who gets up to a ton of mischief if left alone for but a moment.

And, perhaps most impactfully, one of the reasons why my fiance left me was because they changed their mind as to whether or not they wanted to have children. Rather than airing the fact that they no longer felt the desire to have kids with me (among a variety of other truths left unsaid), they chose to leave, saying that it was for the best.

And, for a time, I swore, to myself and the world, that maybe I didn’t want kids. Maybe kids weren’t an important part of my life, a fact only reinforced by a few negative experiences with them around that same time frame. Having to move out of my ex’s apartment, I found myself living with two children, around the ages of four and seven. These kids, not being relatives of mine, had a somewhat turbulent life up until this point, only made more so by my sudden arrival and the appearance of other factors in their lives (factors which I don’t feel necessarily comfortable sharing here).

Needless to say, these stressful circumstances would frequently appear as temper tantrums or general misbehavior. I would be woken at five in the morning on occasion by their screams as they raced toy cars down the banisters of the stairwell. They would have bombastic freak-outs right before bed due to being kept up well past their bedtime. It became somewhat agonizing, and with my friend’s two-year-old liking to push boundaries (a quality that I previously found endearing but suddenly became frustrating), it was becoming clearer, in my eye, that kids weren’t for me.

As you may gather by my tone or the terms I’m using, I was in denial, partly out of a want to reunite with my ex and partly due to my own ever-shifting life, and seeing it constantly shift out of control. Do I want kids of my own? Maybe. But are children a wildly important part of my life? Absolutely.

All of this became fairly clear to me in a flash. I was playing Hearthstone, an online card game, in my free-time when the seven-year-old who resides in my current residence came up to me and started asking excited questions about the cards on the screen. I began to explain how the game worked, keeping explanations fairly simple and straightforward, showing her just how bad at the game I am. She was incredibly receptive to what I was saying, having played Magic: The Gathering in the past, a fact that, I’ll admit, surprised me. Sure, she wasn’t building the decks herself, but at the age of seven, I don’t know if I would have the understanding or comprehension to really understand that sort of game.

At one point, she asked to try a match for herself, which I happily said yes to, and while she needed a helping hand playing cards or activating different effects, she was genuinely enjoying herself, comprehending much of the game for the most part, and bonding. She would ask me advice about this, that, or the other thing, not just about the game but my thoughts on movies, attitudes, life as a whole. It became clear that I was more than someone to play games with, but some sort of guiding force, someone who could help her get through the world, someone she could trust.

She saw that I had cooked up some food for myself (a steak with some veggies), and asked if she could try some. I cut her a piece, she tried it and found herself elated, saying how good it was and asking for more. Afterwards, she went as far to ask if I could cook her some myself, which I, unfortunately, explained that I didn’t have the ingredients to make more, a not entirely honest statement I’ll admit, but a necessary one. I wasn’t about to step on the toes of her parents, who had a habit of serving them prepackaged meals or simple sandwiches.

Afterwards, she hesitantly asked if maybe we could possibly play Magic or Hearthstone another day when we both had free time. I quickly reassured her that, yes, of course, we could play again at some point. Since then, we’ve played a couple games of Magic, after which she sat nearby while I worked asking various questions about the stickers on my laptop, the work that I do, the music I listen to, and so on. While her parent was quick to remind her that I was working and didn’t need to be bothered, I reassured them that I didn’t mind.

And it all comes back to this; there are few things that make me happier in life than:

1. People
2. Honesty
3. Teaching
4. Intelligent Conversation

My interactions with this seven-year-old satiated all of these high priorities of mine. I was interacting with a person, a meaningful individual who is very active in my life. Some might hesitate to refer to a child in such a manner, but one of the most important things anyone can do for a child treats them like an adult.

We’ve all had those moments when we’ve felt talked down to, handled with kid gloves, not really treated well because of our age, and that’s simply unfair, and often leads to emotional issues later on in life. I’m a firm believer of nurture over nature, ie that the way we are raised makes a larger impression on who we are as people than any innate personality traits we may or may not be born with. I’ve seen this effect very prominently in those kids that I worked with at the summer camp I previously worked at, and I continue to see it in my friends’ kids, for better or worse.

It’s wildly important to be providing kids with positive role models to look up to, people who don’t just act in positive ways, but interact with them in positive ways, treating them like adults early on so they can grow up to treat themselves like adults, nurturing smart and ethical behaviors from the offset.

Much of that will come from a child’s innate honesty. Much of this comes from the fact that kids haven’t faced the world and all its made-up rules yet. What’s considered “socially acceptable” doesn’t matter to them, nor does any concerns for appearing weird or different. They simply are who they are, and this is a mindset that we should all envy and live to be like.

We, as a people, live out of concern for how others see us rather than how we see ourselves. We constantly strive for approval, for being told that we’re good or worthwhile, that we’ve been accepted in a world we feel so alone in. And these feelings are incredibly valid; I feel the very heavily on a day to day basis, especially now. Yet we cannot allow that search to shape who we are as people, as so many of us do. We wear masks in hopes of disguising our true intentions, wants, thoughts, hiding behind platitudes and easy responses.

In the words of Emerson, “In the minds of geniuses, we find - once more - our own neglected thoughts.” In other words, those of us who are emotionally smart enough aren’t afraid of being themselves, allowing to speak of all the difficulties and uncertainties that many of us would hesitate to express even to ourselves.

And the weird thing is, we’ve all had it at some point in our lives; as kids. We were all there, and somewhere down the road, it was lost, suddenly and jarringly. We allowed ourselves to lose that honesty because of our fears of what anyone else might think.

In many ways, children have become role models for me due to this. I want to recover that honesty, combining it with the emotional intelligence that I have cultivated for myself. Someone once said to me, “You know, for someone who hates masks, you sure put on a pretty good one,” a statement that has inspired a revolution in how I see the world and how I hope to continue to interact with it.

But I’ll save that for another time.

In the same vein, as kids are teaching me things about myself, I hope to teach them positive life lessons moving forward. I’ve always loved teaching and had something of a gift for it. I’ve been told by many members of my gaming groups that they would not enjoy board games nearly as much if I was not the one teaching them, due to how well I explain and guide people through the different stages and aspects of each game.I take pride in my ability to present those around me with new perspectives and ideas of how I view the world and various things mean to me.

Perhaps my ability to teach partially stems from that complete honesty I try and foster, that by forcing myself to be as straightforward as possible as I can about all things, I thus make content more accessible through that honesty. That being said, a number of paragraphs ago I mentioned that I had lied, so clearly I have some work to do in that manner. But still, I feel it potentially worth noting or considering whether or not there’s some correlation of these ideas.

Anyway.

At the end of the day, we can only pass on what we have to offer, and while any physical objects will wither and die sooner rather than later, knowledge can be continually passed on. It too will die eventually, but I believe it will last longer and spread more easily than any object. My hope is that the knowledge I have to offer can benefit those around me in a positive way.

But again, a topic for another time.

Many would question how I can have an intelligent conversation with a seven-year-old, how I could learn from someone so young, how I could treat them like an adult. It’s an unfortunate stigma that permeates our society and actively works to damage our kids because of it. When I say “treat like adults,” what I mean is holding them responsible, within reason, for their actions. Expose them to difficult topics in safe environments at appropriate ages rather than shielding them from those things. Arming them with knowledge, kindness, and understanding rather than expecting them to simply find them through experiences, experiences that will inevitably have damaging or incorrect aspects attached to them.

In this way, talking to a child can lead to some of the most intelligent conversations, as many of their questions will inevitably lead to you questioning your understanding of the topic. When I was talking with the seven-year-old, her four-year-old sibling shouted “fuck”, an action that was quickly reprimanded by her parent. At this point, the seven-year-old, curious, said that “yeah, we shouldn’t use that word because it’s mean, and not many people use that word, right?” While my first instinct was to mindlessly agree, I instead presented this: “Well, a lot of people actually use that word quite a lot, often because they are frustrated with the world and don’t know how else to express it. So rather than saying ‘I’m angry’ or ‘I’m upset,’ they say that word in hopes of expressing that, but also to lash out and hurt other people in the process.”

Now, I’m someone who curses. A lot. More often than not, this is done jokingly or without negative connotations attached to it, but the conversation got me thinking about how I speak and whether or not attaching those terms are in fact negatively impacting my ability to express myself. Because while I spoke honestly when speaking with the seven-year-old, I also know that “fuck” doesn’t have to be a negative term, depending on the context and environment it is said in.

Still, the conversation got me thinking about this idea in a wildly different and interesting way, probably in a way that I otherwise wouldn’t have considered it. Thus, I was having an intelligent conversation with a unique individual, one that couldn’t easily be replicated when talking to most adults.

It’s been hard to face much of these ideas or even discuss them due to some deep-seated fears of mine, but this is a topic that, I feel is worth exploring. We can help to make kids happier, healthier, and better for a wildly more positive life than the ones we live, and, in turn, they will help us become better in the process.