When I showed my wife the statement "Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind" she exclaimed. "Goodness gracious!" she said, "That's selfish! Everybody matters!" She went on to say that it is part of the individualism of our age and contributes to the problems in families, communities etc. I think there is something in how you express what you are feeling. That can be done constructively. But the statement on its own can lead to problems. We had a guy who was completely like that. He would call a spade a spade. He has a brilliant mind. You have to know your stuff if you debate with him. He is well read and thinks a lot. He came to our drop-in in our early years, but he was so much trouble for us. You never knew when things were going to flair up because he was so blunt in saying what he felt. If he was talking to you and thought, "That's stupid" (as we all do sometimes) he would say, "That's bloody stupid" or worse. On one hand he was refreshing because he just let it all hang out and said things normal people just think. I often had to stiffle a laugh because he voiced what I was thinking. But as a consequence he is banned from nearly every pub in town, every drop-in centre except ours, every mental health support group and now he just sits at home and plays computer games with himself. It seemed hard to communicate to him that if you want to mix you have to modify your behaviour and you just cannot blurt out any and every feeling. He once said that I was the only friend he had. Yet he of any person I know lived by this proverb, "Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind" We can bandy these sayings around, they sound OK, but in real life they just don't work.
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On the other hand, there's lots of room in the world for gentle candor.
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