“Good morning! How are you?”
“I’m fine! How are you?” replies your best smiley telephone voice, while you pretend not to feel like death warmed up as you drag your sorry backside to the nearest thing to sit/lean/lie on.
Go on, you’ve done it, haven’t you? We all have.
There are lots of reasons. The person on the other end of the line may simply be being polite… they don’t need or want an answer… or not an honest one. They neither know nor care how, or perhaps even who, you are. It is just a conversational gambit. Those who do know you, and are likely to know when things are not quite right, may follow up with a further question, to which you may possibly give a slightly more honest answer. Those who really care will probably not stop there, but will ask until you tell them something that sits in line with what they know already and are expecting to hear.
But even then, chances are you play it down.
“A bit tired” does service for “utterly exhausted”, “a tad uncomfortable” may not reflect the small mountain of empty painkiller packets accumulating next to the sink with the dishes you haven’t had the energy to wash for days. “I’ve been better”, generally followed by a weak but reassuring chuckle, covers a multitude of possibilities ranging from the simplest to the fact that you are currently flat out on the bathroom floor in agony, cradling the phone between your ear and the porcelain receptacle of your woes.
Yet we all do it.
Now, don’t get me wrong here, I am not for a moment advocating that we all indulge in bemoaning our ailments at the drop of a hat. Nor spend half an hour going into vast detail about the nitty gritty and more unpleasant details. But when someone who actually cares bothers to pick up the phone and find out, we never tell the truth.
It is easy enough to dismiss this… we don’t want to be boring/ burdening/worrying people with our problems. And perhaps too there is a vague and underlying hope that if we minimise the problems and pretend they don’t exist they will go away. Of course, the downside here is that if you really minimise, people expect you to carry on as normal. And that may simply not be possible.
Then there is the ‘legitimate’ excuse of not wanting loved ones to worry over much. I ran into that one a couple of years ago, when I found myself writing that I was ‘okay’ from a hospital bed, into which I had been deposited by the paramedics. I was ‘fine’, even though I couldn’t even sit up and was hooked up to various beeping machines and wearing more needles than a pin cushion.
With no-one closer than 150 miles away, one worried son offering to ride a high powered motorbike in the snow and another threatening to jump in a hugely expensive taxi, it seemed best to reassure them I was not about to shuffle off this mortal coil. Even though I wasn’t so sure of that myself at the time and wished they were there. I can freely admit… now… that I just wanted to be held while I cried, instead of having the tears slide unnoticed into a mascara stained pillow.
Perversely, of course, had anyone been there, I would have shrugged that off too. Because you just do, don’t you?
Yet thinking about it, should we always play things down? Are there perhaps times when we have to strip back the veneer of bravado and expose the pain, fears and possibilities for some, at least, to see?
Had my condition at that time been as bad as I both felt and as my stats were indicating, would my natural desire to reassure my sons have robbed them of a chance to ‘be there’ which might have been critical to them? It worries me that a stubborn pride in my own ability to cope alone and my over-protectiveness of those I love could be so counter-productive.
There is only so much one can do to protect others before it becomes the opposite of helpful. As parents we learn that… there is a moment when we have to let go and watch our children take flight, hoping they do not land ingloriously on their beaks, but find the wind in their wings. Even if they fall, we have to stand back and let them find their feet on their own and try again.
So it is with others we love too. Sometimes we have to let them choose their own path, no matter how clearly we see the pitfalls and possibilities. It is of no value simply to lead people forward… they have to find their own way in order to grow. And sometimes this freedom, though the hardest gift to give, is the greatest gift we can offer. It speaks of our faith and belief in them, our trust and pride in who they are and who they can be, and that freedom is, I think, the purest manifestation of the love we have for them.
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
And possibly one of the hardest skills we have to learn!
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I think so. Especially mums 😉
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🙂
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Pingback: Veiling the truth | O LADO ESCURO DA LUA
Wonderful post, Sue.
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Thanks, Richard.
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Reblogged this on Sun in Gemini.
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Great post, Sue.
I think honesty is important among loved ones. The rest aren’t part of this really, are they?
My father and I had a deal that we would always be honest with each other as we agreed that trust was key. We stuck to it and it was sometimes very hard, on both sides, but I’m so glad we had that arrengement.
It’s not one that I’ve had so definitively with anyone else. I think it requires that both parties are completely at one about it and that’s quite unusual.
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I agree Jean, yet the instinct to protect is a hard one to overcome.
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There is a lot of substance in this post, Sue, but for me, the last line speaks volumes. Well said.
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Thanks, Van. I really do believe that.
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Someone once told me if you want to keep your children close (in an emotional rather than a geographical sense) the best thing to do is cut the binding ropes.
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I believe that is absolutely true, Mary.
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Love this post Sue. My mother had a tendency to be over-protective — or at least that’s what I believed when I was a fiercely independent only child trying to find my own way. She wasn’t really, she (and my father) encouraged me to think for myself, to voice my opinions, to dream and follow my heart; and, in fact, they gave me plenty of leeway even as a youngster. It’s a natural born instinct to want to protect those we love, to shield them from pain, to help them avoid making mistakes but as you say, the greatest gift we can each other is freedom.
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We always want to prtect those we love…it is natural… but we can do so and still give them space to fly.
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Absolutely.
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Hi Sue, great post although I think the playing down is an English thing. South Africans are generally quite happy to pour out their woes to their friends and family.
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There is an element of understatement in the Bitish language and mindset, it is true. 🙂
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we, that’s my family and I, try and give honest and dispassionate descriptions of what is happening to us but that is often easier said than done and the natural reaction is a protective one for sure.
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There are always conflicting emotions to deal with in such circumstances.
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I have found that protecting people from the truth pretty much always ends badly. The people who really care — not the casual acquaintances, but the good friends and family — want to know. They want to make their own choice about how to react and not only do we have an obligation to be honest with them. we owe them the respect of assuming that they are capable of making a choice given the facts.
It’s normal and right to protect children and the very elderly or seriously ill, because they are fragile and perhaps unable to make a realistic decision. But grown adult children, friends and other family? Don’t they deserve honesty? Won’t they resent discovering they were given anything less than the truth?
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I agree. It is odd though; during my late partner’s final illness, we were totally honest with the boys and involved them every step of the way. I get pneumonia…and still go to look after Nick…Maybe it is a ‘mum thing’.
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Is it such a tricky situation, isn’t it? My dad was always saying that he was ok right up until the end. Only once did I get him to admit it when I asked him again if he was in pain (I could see he was) Like you mentioned Sue, those close to us could typically tell when there is something wrong, despite our reassurances that there isn’t!
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I don’t think there is any way to hide from those we love, but just how honest we are is a different matter sometimes.
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Yes, that is true, sometimes we can get away with downplaying it 🙂
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Maybe we shouldn’t though.
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I know, 🙂
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I understand this, especially with the kids, even if they are grown. We sense that in some ways, we are bedrock to them and the slightest hint that we might not be there for them sends them reeling. Best to tell the white lie until the last minute, I think. 😉
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I think we can hold back on the minor stuff, the getting older stuff that creaks and aches…up to a point. The bigger things though, I’d never hide from them.
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Agreed!
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Golly Sue, what a beautifully written and beautifully expressed post dealing with complex and conflicting deep emotions. One of the many many things I liked about it was that even when you seemed exhausted by life and ready to rage against heaven, your inner strength shone through implicitly. It was nothing you said, it was just there running through every line line you wrote like a subtext. I know it is biographical and so don’t want to seem inappropriate, but it is a powerful piece of work in its own right. Your simple and quite naked narrative style, especially given the subject matter, worked beautifully to underline and punctuate every emotional nuance, every tic. It is a magnificent piece of writing that has to resonate with everyone who reads it (and has judging by the comments).
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Thanks, Paul. Yes, it referred in part to an incident when I rather melodramatically collapsed in a heap in a layby near Crewe…miles from home a couple of years ago. But it highlights a problem we all end up dealing with, from one end of the equation or another.
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I think that was what felt so profoundly moving. It is something everyone goes through at some time or other, in one way or another. And you used your own life, laid bare, to unmask universal emotional truth
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I don’t really think you can ever draw upon anything else but your own life in one way or another.
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In the beginning of our relationship I can’t begin to count the number of times I gave Mrs Widds a severe frowning for doing the, ‘I’m fine’, routine or not telling me when she’s hurt herself. Now I only have to do it once a month or so! 😀
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😀 Yes, I know that feeling….
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I had a phone call last week from the husband of an old client of mine. The news wasn’t good. The cancer she’d fought off a couple of times before had come back again and this time it beat her.
Over the years, we’d had many long conversations, including several about the cancer. Of more relevance to your post, Sue, was the recurring theme that she (in collusion with her husband) had decided not to tell their son because they didn’t want to worry him. He was always at a critical time of life – exams, starting uni, etc.. Although I’m generally of the mind that we should all make our own decisions, I did persist in pointing out that, if the worst did happen, her son might feel cheated in the way you refer to. But also angry. Angry that his parents hadn’t trusted enough that he could handle such traumatic news – particularly as, when I last saw her, he was training to be a doctor. I tempered my comments by adding that this wasn’t necessarily the case (who am I to judge what’s right or wrong?), but it was a perspective she should consider.
Because it’s been three years since I last saw her, I don’t know what the eventual outcome was – whether the son was told, and how long it was before they told him. All I can hope is that they did the right thing for all concerned.
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That was why, when my late partner was dying, we included the boys in treatment and outcomes. It is never a good thing to go through and there is never a good time. But you can trust them to make the choices.
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Reblogged this on Anita Dawes & Jaye Marie.
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Thanks, Jaye x
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I think we must be wired to put on a brave face, unless we really cannot manage… good job that doesn’t happen very often…
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I have a feeling the British are very good at this…although we are always complaining of the small stuff, the big stuff goes under the radar.
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Reblogged this on Kate McClelland.
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Thanks, Kate 🙂
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