Honesty… Best Practice? Really??

Honesty is a complicated concept. To say or not to say.

It’s not always about answering honestly what’s being asked of you, it’s also about having concern for other’s feeling and thoughts.

If you don’t want your friend to hate you, then don’t say “isn’t that shirt a little too tight?” It is honesty, in a kind manner, but if you’re friend isn’t open to the criticism, even though you mean well, it’s a horrible idea.

I was friends with a girl, once, whose family was very honest with one another. We would all sit at the dinner table, enjoying a family dinner (with me as the special guest), talking about every one’s days at work/school and the father says to the daughter, 

Well you do kind of look 2 months pregnant 

Being a third party, I just sat there, taking in all of the awkwardness.

I mean, this is where the line is blurred. The dad was speaking an honest opinion about the daughter. Although it was an inaccurate description (since you can’t look 2 months pregnant), it was inappropriate. Being an outsider, there is nothing I could have done or said in that situation.

Thankfully, the story isn’t over. The daughter who got that kind of description placed down on her that evening, took a big bite of her spaghetti and said, 

Mmmm, will feed my baby. 

Later on, she played if off like it was no big deal, but (since the daughter was my friend) she also mentioned this in other more serious settings. Saying, 

Did I tell you what my dad called me earlier this week, it was kind of mean 

The problem is that I am a normal size girl and she was thinner than me… did I not mention that before?

I start to wonder, this will probably haunt my friend for a very long time, and what does honesty really get people. Where is the line between opinion and truth? Truth and intent? The only solution I can bring myself to is, sometimes your opinion doesn’t matter. Sometimes my opinion doesn’t matter. And sometimes we just have to let people figure things out life for themselves. Unless it’s a life threatening… whatever… just leave it alone. It’s much better to build the relationship than to tear it down.

The great thing about relationships is that if both parties want to build a relationship up, then forgiveness can be a part of that and it can be done. I don’t know what will happen with my friend and her dad, but I hope for the best. Maybe her dad will see he was being hurtful and apologize. Sometimes apologies are magic.

HI MOM...

My mom and I

Who doesn’t love their mother? I mean, some mothers are harder to deal with than others, but a child will always love his/her mother, it can’t be helped. However, being a young maturing adult begs the question of what kind of relationship to have with your mother.

I’d like to preface this by saying, I am no expert on relationships, but I think I have a damn good relationship with my mother, so, here we go.

My mother and her mother have an interesting and dynamic relationship that dates back through many difficult memories of misunderstandings and communication errors. To this day, even though they speak to each other and are kind to each other, I believe both of them have trouble with the other one. To be more specific, I think both of them still question whether the other one loves them or not. Not good.

Thankfully, my mother refused to continue that cycle and made sure that I knew I was loved every day. In fact, she did this with all five of the children she has, plus all of our past and present (and, I’m sure, future) friends.

Giving you, the reader, this tidbit of information, I would hope to portray that it has been a difficult year moving out and separating myself from my mother. After graduation I had a difficult time finding what I wanted to do with the next 1 – 5 years of my life, much less the rest of my life. My mother had a lot of very good ideas and suggestions, and one in particular was going into the military. However, I, to this day, cannot wrap my head around joining the armed forces. This has been an ongoing battle, if you will, between my mother and I, and when I had nowhere to go except steady at Staples, she decided it was time to push a little harder.

I resisted, and resisted and resisted and resisted, until finally I sat down with her and listened to what she had to say. Why she kept pushing me. I was so busy fighting with her that I neglected to realize that she was trying to help me with the only solution she could think of. All I needed to do was communicate with her, express to her my concerns and beliefs on going into the military and where I wanted to go. She had no idea the dreams I had because I never told her.

My mother is very precious to me, as I’m sure most mothers are, and just because I disagree with my mom on some things doesn’t mean I don’t have a tremendous amount of respect for her. She has so many experiences under her belt and I will always listen, and then make my own choice.

What’s the moral of this story, you ask? Well, I hope you find your own moral, but mine is that it’s ok to disagree with my mother as long as I continue to listen. That’s what being a good “grown-up” daughter is about.