Musing

[written and published from south Calgary, near Fish Creek Park]

2C/36F, spectacular cloudless blue, calm; we walked the ridge all the way to the end of the park and back; I am dripping with sweat . . either I over-dressed or got a good workout, perhaps both . . Gusta slightly bagged too, so I guess it was a little more strenuous than usual

for most of us, truth is something we talk about, revere and extol as virtuous – we want to be truthful, we want others to be truthful with us; because we want to know the truth, right?

truth is not elusive, but it is challenging to see; I confide with close trusted friends; truths, intimate truths, the most important ones not being recitation of facts, issues or history – but rather ‘what I did and why I did it’, ‘what I said and why I said it’, ‘what happened and how I felt about it’

last night someone, who I now view as very insightful, said they thought I was an extrovert until they read musings, then they came to think of me as an introvert; I asked why; the quick answer, ‘because you think and write’; while KM ‘outing me’ as an introvert neither bothers or offends me, that was the first time in a very long while anyone pointed that out with such surgical precision

I began life as an introvert and will likely never shed its tendencies; I operate in business and social circles where being an introvert does not contribute very well to effectiveness . . so the revelation of that to others is something I don’t show deliberately; I’ve always felt it showed a little in many things I do so I have done a lot of things to compensate for that

last night at Toastmasters in a storytelling speech project I told a story and how I felt about it; one critic, with veiled nastiness suggested I ‘lose my superficial veneer of sincerity’; this got me pretty angry; I took it as a suggestion that I was faking ‘how I felt’ which wasn’t anywhere near my feelings at the time; someone else said ‘best speech you’ve done’; other comments spread out along the spectrum, some offering supportive critique, some whitewashing . . a mixed bag; après Toastmasters I was reminded - thank you friends - that one of my oft-stated desires is to be better at accepting criticism; I’ll have to keep working on accepting the unfiltered truth, especially when it does not fit my perceptions - OK, not always accepting it but at least listening to it without blowing a gasket

people who want true truth truthfully told are rare and, because they are rare, we perhaps find them to be a bit strange [I want to be one but some days I wonder if I can handle it]; I think we skate around it in our language, our style, our boundary protection - not so much that we don’t want to be laid bare for anyone to see us as we actually are, but because we are afraid to be seen that way by our harshest critic – ourselves

self evaluation need not be an analysis of what other people ‘saw, heard and felt’ . . but that of assessing the really important stuff . . who I am, what I am, why I am

Mark Kolke
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