Consequential words
What can the other reasonably expect from me?
Seven things I know. Over the next five days, I will be recollecting on lessons learned by experience or reflection in the last year. I want to engage with the hardest personal subjects I manage to. These are field notes from the frontlines of unlearning. Maybe they'll spark your own uncomfortable conversations!
Day 3 — Consequential words
I learned how much I value structure and well-defined interactions. I like people who mean what they say and act accordingly.
Flexibility is a great asset. Humans are adaptive systems that adjust and react to an ever-changing environment. More often than not, the circumstances that surround us will be novel and unique. Rigidity never helps. Intelligence is movement. Nonetheless, in social terms, there is a unique power in accountability. Clarity of mind signals self-respect and opens the possibility of intimacy.
Shame and guilt like to disguise themselves in many forms. Kindness and politeness may hide cowardice. Civil interactions are greedy and like to take all the space away from true intimacy.
We are the affordances we offer the other: what can they reasonably expect from me? Clarity and stability of expression signal that we can be our full selves.
If we are allowed to speak from true desires, we can act accordingly and offer others a space and place to be themselves. Any covert disagreement may surface.
It was never obvious in my upbringing, but I feel it's the only healthy way forward with friends, family, or intimate relationships. When we relate from a standpoint of consequentiality, our words matter. We matter. Modes of behaviour that rely on implicit assumptions, last-minute changes, or unspoken reciprocity will feel archaic and tyrannical afterwards.