This is a brief reflection on a conversation between and myself, wherein she wrote the first half and I replied in kind. Perhaps more will come of this. regardless, please enjoy!
If there was any social moment that allowed for true honesty it was in our jokes. All the little names to describe a likeness and situation. It’s not entirely Jesters Privilege either, more often than not it seems to just be our style.
i’m disguising my bluntness as lighthearted
sometimes i hit and sometimes i miss
genuine counsel comes from a place of the heart
and to leave the heart through the dark passage of the mouth
is no gentle task
so please forgive me if whatever escapes me is crass
Most can recall a time when the playful behavior of another held truth, and how little people listened. Discernment is a gift few people utilize. In times of stress, it is hard not to see everything as an attack, or even to see everything as nothing– completely void of anything genuine. If it stings or pulls at your heartstrings perhaps you’re meant to analyze it deeper, in some cases even when it feels like nothing at all bring it into your heart instead of tossing it over your shoulder. I find honesty has a way of impacting others differently, and of course, its delivery in modern times has been sanded down into a stern and cold seriousness– not the heartfelt counsel it usually is.
But how do you share honestly from the heart when it must go through the passage of coming out your throat and through your teeth? Does it become obscured in verbiage or sound? At times the most genuine things I’ve shared have sounded so foreign when said through my mouth. I sometimes imagine it as another home, one where truths and what must be said reside. They all have their own little spaces and occupy the chest cavity together, and at times visit each other to say hello, and then things are said all at once.
I’ve been practicing the prayer of the heart a lot more recently. Taking into account what Fr. Sergius said about the mind being able to kill us but the heart is where we live. That saying the Jesus prayer takes us out of the mind and its mirrors and into our heart to bring us closer to Christ and of course– others. When I think (rare event for me) I try to ponder one thought at a time, and if I find myself slipping into a monologue between my thoughts I try and return to my heart to have a dialogue. Conversation is with two– the same as love and friendship. Dialogue is forever and living, conversation with self can only last so long before you run circles in your mind.
Certain conversations I remember the most often included some type of nonverbal expression. A sound or touch that encapsulated all that was really needed to say. The exact sounds people have made in joy play over and over in my head in times of grief. They will make happy sounds again. I remember a few weeks ago during forgiveness Sunday a parishioner’s baby made the cutest scream and grabbed my hair and shoulder with surprising force. It still warms me just thinking about it. I’ve expressed countless times the lack that verbal speech has on its own. Alone it is merely words to the air. Together with a physical, it is a genuine connection, and of course the more we practice the better we get at it.
Speaking never came easy to me, so it is very heartwarming when people tell me I have a calming voice or that they like my manner of speaking. I have cried a lot more than said what I had in mind, I don’t think it could match what my tears expressed anyway. Honesty and truth will follow– however unconventional the means of communicating may be.
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Humor softens the truth’s blow, removing illusion and pretense while remaining graceful. A good joke (an honest one) peels back the veil and offers clarity. Those I laugh with are the ones I trust most—it’s hard to fake a smile with real friends.
I see the teeth and tongue not as distorters, but amplifiers. A shaking voice speaks to courage. The heart, if allowed, can act through the body and no longer be restrained by ribs. With each pulse, it travels to the hands, the lips, and the legs, making each motion loving. Truth is conveyed in more than words, and we need not fear our bodies. In the space between You and I, Us and Them, translation occurs—as our physical nature is one of separation. If telepathy exists, the average person has no access to it, and thus our thoughts, when shared (in both jest and sincerity), can be easily misconstrued.
You speak of a delightful shock: a child grabbing at your hair, your body in an impressive display of force, all with a joyful shriek. The child lacks speech, but in this, he is truthful. The child does not have words; it does not have the distortions that come through associations. An infant says more in the honesty of uncontrolled, unfettered expression than one who has studied prose their whole life can. Pure is boundless curiosity and the need to reach out—to touch, to feel, to explore. A shriek is the exact pitch at which an emotion emanates from the vocal cords. It is clear to me that our minds and hearts are in the same understanding of this.
I have this habit which might be considered neurotic, but it’s one I have found incredibly useful. At night, I review what was said and done, recalling everything that I possibly can. Reflection allows for refinement, even if I know perfection is only achieved by the divine. I seek to weed out any hypocrisy—to live in accordance with what I value. My body follows the impulse of the heart, the impulse to live in an honest way where my words do not betray my actions, and vice versa. What I say, I do. Even if I take longer to get the task done, I will do it. Even if I fail the first five times and the second ten are spent struggling, I will complete what I set out to do. I seek to finish what I’ve started.
And so I go to my last name, which will not be my last name for much longer. In Dutch, it means “long of doing,” which can be interpreted as either procrastination or simply spending a lot of time on one task—a cosmic jest of nominal determinism. I oscillate between extreme focus and lackadaisical doddling. It is a behavior I find the most frustrating out of all my faults, and at night, I find myself praying for focus and determination. I will be changing my last name upon marriage as a sort of effort to change my fate by changing the meaning of what I have been named. If I take the meaning of my name currently, it means “to rise reborn in procrastination,” or “she who rises with procrastination.” My new name, upon taking my fiancé’s last name, would be something along the meaning of “rising reborn in steadfastness”—and finally, the great joke will be over. Perhaps then I will be accomplishing all that I seek to set out to do with ease. I think this new name will set me upon a course I can be proud of.
A new name, a new world for the heart to come into.
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