When the appalling truth rushes out of your mouth
Photo by @kkalerry
In Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak (a book about identity and vocation and Quakerism) he tells a story that has stayed with me since I first read it ten years ago. Parker writes…
During my tenure as dean at Pendle Hill, I was offered the opportunity to become the president of a small educational institution. I had visited the campus; spoken with trustees, administrators, faculty, and students; and had been told that if I wanted it, the job was most likely mine.
Vexed as I was about vocation, I was quite certain that this was the job for me. So as is the custom in the Quaker community, I called on half a dozen trusted friends to help me discern my vocation by means of a "clearness committee," a process in which the group refrains from giving you advice but spends three hours asking you honest, open questions to help you discover your own inner truth.' (Looking back, of course, it is clear that my real intent in convening this group was not to discern anything but to brag about being offered a job I had already decided to accept!)
For a while, the questions were easy, at least for a dreamer like me: What is your vision for this institution? What is its mission in the larger society? How would you change the curriculum? How would you handle decision making? What about dealing with conflict?
Halfway into the process, someone asked a question that sounded easier yet but turned out to be very hard: "What would you like most about being a president?"
The simplicity of that question loosed me from my head and lowered me into my heart. I remember pondering for at least a full minute before I could respond. Then, very softly and tentatively, I started to speak: "Well, I would not like having to give up my writing and my teaching. . . . I would not like the politics of the presidency, never knowing who your real friends are. . . . I would not like having to glad-hand people I do not respect simply because they have money. . . . I would not like . . .”
Gently but firmly, the person who had posed the question interrupted me: "May I remind you that I asked what you would most like?"
I responded impatiently, "Yes, yes, I'm working my way toward an answer." Then I resumed my sullen but honest litany: "I would not like having to give up my summer vacations. . . . I would not like having to wear a suit and tie all the time. . . . I would not like . . .”
Once again the questioner called me back to the original question. But this time I felt compelled to give the only honest answer I possessed, an answer that came from the very bottom of my barrel, an answer that appalled even me as I spoke it.
"Well," said I, in the smallest voice I possess, "I guess what I'd like most is getting my picture in the paper with the word president under it."
I was sitting with seasoned Quakers who knew that though my answer was laughable, my mortal soul was clearly at stake! They did not laugh at all but went into a long and serious silence—a silence in which I could only sweat and inwardly groan.
Finally my questioner broke the silence with a question that cracked all of us up-and cracked me open: "Parker," he said, "can you think of an easier way to get your picture in the paper?"
By then it was obvious, even to me, that my desire to be president had much more to do with my ego than with the ecology of my life—so obvious that when the clearness committee ended, I called the school and withdrew my name from consideration. Had I taken that job, it would have been very bad for me and a disaster for the school.
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Parker goes on to talk about how this story illustrates his theory of limits, how despite what many of us were taught growing up, we cannot be or do whatever we desire, and there is power and freedom in accepting our limits and our given nature.
This, too, speaks to me (I definitely grew up under the burden of the myth of the limitless self).
But really, I think the reason I have held this story close for a decade now is because I love remembering that we can and do stumble into these appalling moments when the denial clears or the mask lifts and we are saved by the very truth rushing out of our mouths.
What medicine for those of us who have spent a lot of years in confusion, saying yes when we mean no, holding back, or shape-shifting. We’re often afraid to know what we know because then we might have to do something about it, aka relational conflict! But life has a way of rescuing us from this fog, offering these moments like Parker's, when the truth rushes out anyway and we're shocked to hear it, but so relieved to finally have it out in the open, to finally see what’s been hidden.
I also remember first reading this story and longing for spaces like Parker described where people would resist advice-giving and simply offer true and simple questions, because it was clear that those kinds of questions had the ability to interrupt and cut into our lives, to “loose me from my head and lower me into my heart.” (And I’m just now connecting the dots about how I then went on to pursue a coaching training focused on learning how to ask these very kinds of questions!)
After I shared these ideas in my newsletter, a reader recently wrote back to comment on the “myth of the limitless self” and said that being told “you can be anything” actually felt like lazy and indifferent parenting, like not truly seeing our children. And I think that's exactly right. If you can be anything, in some ways you’re being told you're nothing in particular. This is actually a deep and covert wound that many people who struggle with people-pleasing carry. And part of what I find so moving about Parker's story is that his community did the opposite: they held a mirror up to his specific nature until he could see it himself.
So, what do you think? Have you had moments like this when the truth rushed out of your mouth? I’d love to hear if you’d like to share.
With care,
Brianna
p.s. If you recognize yourself in this—if you've wondered why you struggle to know what you want or can't say what you really think—this is some of what I work on with my clients. Not pushing the truth out, but creating the conditions where it can finally surface on its own. I’m here.