Now I will admit something embarrassing. For years—and I mean years—I suffered from the inexpedient assumption that I should really tell people what was on my mind. No matter whether it was good or bad, friendly or unfriendly, or just plain irrelevant. Where did I get this ridiculous idea?
Well, there have been a series of psychotherapies and philosophies, most of them rooted in some bad Freudian provocations, many of them finding their greatest reach and impact in the 1960s and ’70s, which stated, more or less: speak your mind. These systems of conduct valued authenticity above all. They derided society’s scripted interactions. They sought to liberate their followers from the oppression of everyday propriety and release them into a realm of personal, sexual, and relational candor, an ever-expanding adventure of self-expression and life-as-art joy.
Or that was the idea. What actually happened, at least for me, was I ended up telling people a bunch of nonsense that was in my head, free of the context of those experimental social movements, and ended up in all manner of trouble. I could list about a hundred times when I did this, each more knuckleheaded than the last. But let me just give you a quick and easy (and fairly minor) example.
Last year, Devon and I celebrated our wedding anniversary. It happened to be right before we were making a big move to Hawai’i so I could do my clinical work and finally finish my PhD. It also happened to coincide with an absolute apex of the migrant detainment epidemic at the Mexican-American border, with daily news reports of children locked in cages and families broken up and reprocessed and sometimes never finding their way back to each other. So when my dear mother bought us an anniversary gift—a beautiful, though breakable, vase—I said to her, “Hey, how about we return this vase that we can’t really take with us to Hawai’i and donate the proceeds to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), since they’re doing such good legal work at the border.”
Now, my dear mother had just gone through a breakup with her longtime boyfriend (don’t worry, they got back together) and also just retired and also just moved, and she was in no mood to be told that the lovely vase she’d bought us could not be transported to Hawai’i and that, anyway, wouldn’t it be better to put all that money toward do-gooding? So she kind of got pissed. And I apologized. And she said, “You know, sometimes it’s just better to lie. If only by omission.”
That’s a lesson I’m still trying to learn. Not to lie, really. But to know when to keep my mouth shut. Thankfully, a really long time ago, the Buddha offered a bunch of good advice on how to do just that. In fact, all those years ago, he didn’t just say, “Say what’s true,” he actually gave a handy-dandy list of questions to ask ourselves before we say anything at all.
TRUE, KIND, TIMELY, HELPFUL
Unlike the proto-Freudian hedonists of the human potential movement, with their utopian ideals of interpersonal authenticity, the Buddha actually recommended that we be pretty careful with our speech. In fact, he devoted a substantial portion of his substantial teachings to advising people about how to speak to each other. There could be whole books on the topic, in fact. (And there are.) But for our purposes we can sum up the Buddha’s advice in four simple questions. Questions you can ask yourself just before you open your mouth to say something—anytime, to anyone.
Is This True?
Is what I’m about to say true? Am I speaking the truth? Is what I’m saying clear and honest? Or am I bending things in some way? Am I spinning, pushing the truth a bit, massaging the facts to get something I want out of this interaction?
If the answer to any of these questions is anything but “Yup, this is true,” then the Buddha advises that you don’t speak. Instead, take a moment, hold your tongue, and consider other options.
Is This Kind?
Is what I am about to say kind? Is what I am about to fire off in this text or email considerate? Is this heated missive in an online forum caring? Is it taking into account the other person’s inner world? Even when that other person might be a loved one who has seriously pissed me off, or a total stranger who so obviously seems to deserve a whopping verbal punch in the proverbial face?
Again, if the answer to any of these questions is anything other than “Yes, what I am about to say is kind,” then the Buddha advises silence. Take a minute. Think things through. Is there a way to say this that’s kind? Or at the very least, not unkind? Ninety-nine out of a hundred times there is a way. You just have to find it. And once you start to realize how much less your life feels like it’s spinning out of control when you start to interact this way, you’ll be more and more motivated to try.
Is It Timely?
Is what I am about to say timely? Is this the right time to say this? If it’s eleven o’clock at night and your boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other is about to fall asleep, is this the right time to bring up that thing that happened at eleven o’clock this morning and has been kind of troubling you, but not really that much, but actually, well, kind of a lot? I’m not saying it would definitely be the wrong time. But you could think it through. Might there be another time to bring this up honestly and kindly that would better serve the conversation?
Is It Helpful?
So these words are about to leave my mouth. Quick check: Are they actually helpful? Are they going to move the situation forward in the way I want? How will they land for the person (or people) in front of me?
Sometimes, for sure, it’s hard to know what’s helpful and what’s not. And it’s definitely tough to know just exactly how something will land for the people in our lives. But one surefire way to get it right a lot more of the time is to at least make sure your intention is to be helpful.
SKILLFUL SPEECH
There are people out there—and I’ve met a lot of them now—who follow these guidelines of True, Kind, Timely, Helpful beautifully. And they all have some things in common: they have good friends, stable community connections, a sort of quiet confidence, and they kind of glow.
There are, therefore, a lot of great examples I could offer. But the one I know best is my wife, Devon. Devon beams goodness at everyone she meets. When we go jogging together, for example, she smiles at every person we pass. Not in that awkward, socially conventional, I’m-smiling-because-I’m-supposed-to kind of way. It’s more like she’s saying, I’m so glad we share this planet together.
And you should see people’s reactions. I’ve seen strangers do a double take. They’ve stopped walking and just stood, basking in that sunlight. Nearly everyone smiles back. And when they do, it’s a real smile, the smile of recognition and connection.
For another instance, a while back I worked on the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i, three days a week, for a year. Moloka’i is known as an outer island. It’s small, with a population of about 7,500, about 60 percent Native Hawaiian. To say the community there is tight-knit would be an understatement. Folks hold an air of skepticism; outsiders are treated as just that—outsiders. So when, after three months, I had been pretty well accepted into the community as a therapist, I felt relieved and happy.