HONESTY MONTH: DAY 12: “I think humans are only capable of small moments of honesty. Then they get tired and back away. It’s something to foster, this ability to keep it for longer. How to keep being honest and aware.” ― Laura Pritchett
Deep honesty does not happen all the time. I love when I am sharing with someone a moment of deep honesty. We are open and present in that moment, at that time. When I first read this quote, I wanted to disagree with it, but I cannot. It is really true.
We spend very little time being honest with ourselves or others. It would be too intense to sit in that space all the time. A deep relationship will bring this into being.
I know few people who have that kind of deep relationship. Where we are intensely honest with self and the person with whom we spend most of our time. That happened for me with my husband in the months following his diagnosis of terminal illness.
At first, we spent all of that time together doing the things he really wanted to accomplish before he died. We did not bring a lot of other people into it. When we did, they would not get what we were doing in his dying process and we would be really happy for them to leave. It truly became a time for just us.
As other people would come into the experience, they would go away, because it was too intense to sit with either of us. We were not pretending to be anything other than living fully and completely and deeply in that moment and expressing all of the things that we felt and knew about our experiences of each other and that person with us. It was really intense!
I loved it and so did he. But we had a lot of folks who could not be with his dying and our way of living. We refused to waste time watching tv or movies or talking about BS stuff. We were deep and authentic. We would talk about the nature of our relationships with others and how they had shifted our beliefs and our lives.
I have had very few relationships since then because I want to stay in that level of conversation with others. This is a challenge. I cannot spend a great deal of time with those who cannot engage on a deeper level than social chit chat. It bores me intensely.
I love this stuff. It fascinates me and keeps me curious about life and how recovery works in daily living. Also how recovery gives me tools to deepen my relationships with others.
