Keep Your Mouth Shut: It’s Safer

Before you think I’ve lost my mind, or whatever is left of it, this is not what I believe, but what I was told as a kid.  And it has had lasting influence on my life, time and time again.  When I was in the 7th grade, I had a teacher who asked us if we believed in the ten commandments.  Of course we all said ‘yes.’  Then she asked if we believed we should ‘love our neighbor’ to which we also responded with a yes. She went on to say that if a black person wanted to by our house we should not sell it to him because it might upset our ‘neighbor.’  I raised my hand, deeply disturbed and confused by her words.  “Miss Larkin”, I began.  “I don’t think that’s what the bible means  by neighbor.  If the person living next door to me is a bigot, that is not the person I should love.  The man trying to buy my house is a human being and he is my neighbor.”  She called me a communist, and kicked me out of her class.  Several of my friends drifted away, no longer able to talk on the phone, or play after school.  Their parents clearly thought I was dangerous. When I think of that time of my life, my stomach still clenches:  I was totally miserable.   My parents actually moved to get me out of that school system, in the hopes that I might make new friends.  And before we moved my mom told me to try not to be so verbal about what I saw or felt, which was frightening and confusing.  Fortunately I met my friend Margaret, and within weeks we were talking truthfully about everything. She, too, felt like an outsider.  When we would walk home from school to my house or hers, as we approached a gated community between the two homes, we would call out, “Close your doors: the Jew and the Catholic are walking through!”  And then we would always laugh uproariously.  I doubt anyone ever even heard us.  In college I went to an SDS meeting because I friend was going, and startled everyone by crying in the meeting.  I felt humiliated.  “I didn’t know there were other people who felt the way I did about the world, and how it works. I haven’t talked like this in years because it seemed too dangerous.”  Now most of my friends feel as I do about things political and I’m not afraid of losing them if we disagree.  But I have a more difficult time with personal issues.  If I am troubled by a friend’s behavior with me, and know she or he will not be pleased by what I have to say, I spend hours, days and sometimes weeks, trying to figure it out.  And I feel pretty frightened when I say my piece.  The good news is that I say what I need to say. The bad, that saying my truth often feels frightening.  Initially this was also true in my relationship with my significant other.  But I have learned he is really willing to listen and to think about behaviors that bother me.  He has even altered some, which has utterly amazed me.  Of course I have done the same, but that is not my issue.  If anything, in my past I have altered too much too willingly so that I wouldn’t be left alone.  That behavior comes from the same issue, I think, and thankfully years of inner work has improved my disproportionate willingness to change.  No only can I speak out publicly, I can also say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a request for change from a close friend or my partner even when it feels stressful to do so.  Everything is progressive, so this seems a good thing to me. Maybe when I’m eighty difficult words will come dripingly off my tongue and not be difficult at all.