My thoughts on 'The Power of Kindess' by Piero Ferrucci

Honesty...

An excerpt: '...not only is honesty compatible with genuine kindness, it is the very basis of kindness. False kindness pollutes. As long as you are not living the truth, you cannot really communicate with others, you cannot have trust, you cannot relate. As long as you do not call the hard realities by name, you are living in the land of dreams. There is no room for you and me there, but only for harmful illusions. Inasmuch as we lie, we live a life devoid of reality. And kindness cannot exist in a world of masks and phantoms.'

This was one of those chapters that was a bit harder for me to read through and accept whole-heartedly. Admittedly, it is one of the most difficult areas in my life. I have often wondered why others around me could have a genuine conversation with another person they barely know, and that other person would genuinely light up and open up and laugh and share, yet when I put on my 'nicest' smile, and tried to be polite, I often received a semi-cool, but still passably polite, response. I now realize that is because they are mirroring exactly what I'm doing. By pasting on that smiley mask, I'm showing them that I'm not comfortable enough with them to show my true feelings at that moment, thus there is no substance to what I say or do. Kind of hard to carry on a conversation when you don't know if the person is genuinely interested, or if they're painfully faking their way through it...

In our family, we were raised to be excruciatingly sensitive to how others feel about us, and about the things we say. Not that this is a bad thing at all, however, I do believe that to some extent, it fostered a sense of 'hide everything, display appropriate politeness and reactions as expected'. For example, if someone said 'do you think these jeans look nice on me?' I don't think ANYONE in my family would say 'well, no, they kind of look funny on your butt', for risk of having the other person completely crumble to ashamed pieces over their interpretation of what you were saying (ex: 'you think I'm fat'). That might be an exaggerated example in some ways, but honestly, once I was living with my fiancé and went through the first semi-painful experiences where I said 'do I look okay?' and he said 'well, I don't really like that shirt', I realized that it wasn't an attack on me, and that I was putting my own thoughts into my interpretation of what he was saying. 9 times out of 10, it was true, the shirt wasn't that nice. The other 1 time, I learned to smile and say 'that's okay, I like it' and wear it anyway. Mind you, I still believe that people can be too honest, and border on cruelty. In my opinion, if it doesn't matter, and it will hurt the person, don't say it. Especially if it's your OPINION. For example, if someone was singing a song to themselves, or wearing a new shirt, and their voice was terrible, or maybe the shirt was not a style you'd choose, I would never ever say 'please stop, you can't sing', or 'take off that shirt, I don't like it' - but I've known people who DID say that. To me, that's just a way of bullying people, all you've done is made the other person feel incredibly stupid and hurt, and you have no right to say anything unless they truly ask for your opinion. So there's a difference.

In the book, he sites other examples like, if you're at a dinner party, and someone offers you some sort of dish that you absolutely cannot tolerate, you have three choices. One, you can politely decline, explaining that you don't care for that kind of food, two, you can hide the food in your purse when no one is looking, and risk having the host/hostess offer you another serving (thus making for a rather uncomfortable evening and a mess to clean up later), or three, you can choke down the food, again being uncomfortable, and like it or not, displaying that discomfort to your host. His point is that by doing option one, politely declining, you are not saying the host/hostess is a horrible cook, you are being honest, and showing a side of yourself that they now understand for next time. It's reality, it's truthful, and if done tactfully, should be much appreciated. This actually is exactly another thing I had to learn from experience - I would cook up grand meals of, for example, lemon chicken, and Luc would tell me in the most gentle way possible, 'thanks honey, but I don't like fruit flavours with meat'. At first, I took major offense, until I realized it probably took some courage to tell me that, and furthermore, that's just a fact of life, he doesn't like fruity flavours with meat, so I will not bother making lemon chicken, or duck a l'orange, etc. for him... :)

The other part of honesty, that for me is difficult, is sharing how you really feel, or stories about yourself. I try to keep myself locked away from others, for whatever reason (mostly because of that oversensitive side I have), and as a result, they have nothing to relate to. It's pretty simple - how can you expect them to open up and really get to KNOW you, if you won't let them see the real you? This is hard too because again, it introduces a risk that maybe they won't like you... The author's experience has been that the opposite usually happens, if people get to know you on a good day and on a bad day, they see you are HUMAN, and appreciate interacting with you that much more. :) I do struggle with this though, as too much ‘bad day’ sharing becomes quickly seen as constant complaining, and then you’re certainly not the life of the party either!

Finally, there is a health aspect to being truthful. Studies have shown that eccentrics, those people who really have no regard for how others view them, and truly live the way they want to, despite how 'wacky' it may be to others around them, are much healthier and have stronger immune systems than those people who are constantly twisting themselves to conform to their perception of how others want to see them. Lying causes stress, (which is how lie detectors work), as it is in our nature to first tell the truth in our mind, then we have to struggle to re-write it in our brains before spitting it out in its re-invented form... If you are doing this every day, you could see how exhausting it would be, if every thought that came to you had to be reworked, every action you performed had to be carefully scrutinized and acted out perfectly... It's much easier to just accept the truth of who you are, revel in the glory of being interesting vs 'perfect', and live your life for YOU. Ironically enough, that will attract others much more than pretending to be a something you are not, and you can finally offer them warmth and kindness that you truly feel, because you aren’t wasting energy on emotions that just aren’t there... :)