Sitting down with my manager and explaining that I wasn’t going to stay in the job I’d been striving to get to for over nearly two decades was far and away the hardest thing I’ve done in a long time. I seemed like, was, a loyal employee in it for the long haul. I could have been there until retirement. I still had a lot to learn and plenty to offer. To leave, and with seemingly no ‘better’ job having stolen me away, made no obvious sense to anyone. Except for me. The decision to stop and recalibrate seemed the most obvious and honest thing for me to do.
Let’s be clear. It didn’t make sense to me at the time. It wasn’t logical. It was definitely ill-advised from a professional perspective and tough (impossible) to justify from a financial viewpoint. I just knew I had to do it. It’s a bit of a ‘woo woo’ way to look at the world and that’s not something I’m known for! Telling yourself the truth feels seismic in its impact. It hits you at the core as being right. Max wrote no trickier line in the Desiderata than this one. Well, at least in my book. Speaking your truth sounds so simple, doesn’t it?
I had a reputation in my 20s for telling it like it is. I was ever so proud of it. Mostly, people appreciated it. Perhaps my strict social compass pointed at fact and not fiction and therefore truth was always the right way. You know a young adult like this, don’t you? Walking the straight road through the chaos and taking no prisoners along the way? Justifying the bruises as collateral damage in the good fight against illusion and distraction from the real things. Sigh. Perhaps I was a bit much back then. Being honest might have really been a convenient name for being wee bit thoughtless…
Make no mistakes. Honesty is not always the best policy. At least, overt truth telling without restraint. It can do more harm than good, it’s so easily weaponised.
‘You’ve put on a bit of weight‘ may be true but it does not usually warrant a discussion. If you say this out loud you probably want to make sure you’re some distance from the person you’ve aimed it at and don’t expect backup. Starting with the words ‘no offence, but‘ only gives your target time to get their gloves up and does not soften the blow. Follow up with ‘it’s better to know than be in the dark’ or ‘a good friend always says it like it is‘ just proves you’re in the enemy camp. It’s not ok to tell truths like this!!! The worst one (mea culpa) is ‘oh my goodness, you’re pregnant!’ I just cannot help you with this one. Don’t do it. Just don’t.
I’d like to think that perhaps I’ve managed to settle my honesty into a more socially acceptable form these days. As coach and manager I won’t tell you a lie but I also won’t tell you an opinion that, while technically honest from my perspective, serves you no good purpose. It has taken a lot of practice. I am on the path but, I tell you, sometimes it’s tough to hold my tongue!
The hardest truth to tell is the one you admit to yourself. I’ve been writing in journals all my life, more consistently over the last few years. Only occasionally am I game to put down in indelible ink something that is honest and true and tough to admit. Only because my eyes are the sole audience can I do it and only when there are words that tell it truly is it even possible. They have to be plain, simple words. Sometimes they hit like a tennis ball served by my sister – straight between the eyes, no chance of evasion, and the bruise will ache for longer than is comfortable. Words like… I’m lonely. I’m unhappy. I’m privileged. I want to wear my hair in plaits even though I’m over 50!
I have been grateful for a precious group of women who just recently I described as ‘more like sisters’. By that I meant that we are very different beings who approach the world in ways that seem so different it appears on the outside to be nigh impossible to align us in a circle of friendship. Don’t you need to have more in common for that to work??? We came together out of desperate necessity. We were new to town, lonely with little ones at foot, almost out of options for finding a tribe to join. The only thing we had in common on paper seemed to be our ability to have children in a regional town. Not a great starting point but perhaps one of the more common ones?
When thrown together in a situation like this you actually hold on tight. We were lifebuoys for one another in those tumultuous toddler years. The differences in our backgrounds, careers and belief systems may as well have been non-existent – we were all hands on deck and bailing out water as fast as possible to keep our boats afloat. Thank goodness for this crew! Rarely was there a captain, we took it in turns to make sure we had the strength and supplies needed to get up the next day and do it all over again.
I wrote about the different types of friendships we meet through life and I have to admit that this group still has me stumped. If I’m honest, it’s been years since we have called on one another to fit a lifejacket or ask for help to steer a ship to shore. It’s been more like a shared radio channel than sailing on the same ocean. The differences between us that have been present all along are now front and centre. We move in very different social circles, believe some very different things about faith and politics and society, and enjoy the world in ways that often have no way of overlapping. If we are simplistic about things, on the surface it could be argued that this friendship has had its season.
All of this may be true. But if I’m honest… I cannot imagine letting them go. It would be like losing a limb.
This is why I think the crew of the good ship FNS is actually family. They’ve moved from people I chose to be with to people I am tethered to through both storm and sunshine. Like those of my blood, there are times when we don’t see each other for ages, times when we are glad not to see each other for a while! We annoy and challenge one another with our differences. And then, when the big moments hit, they’re the ones on the frontline.
Ladies of FNS, forgive me for comparing you to a ship’s crew and know that the ‘c’ word I use for you is companions. Happy 20th anniversary!!!
