"The New Normal."

Deciphering Political Correctness

“The reality of the other person lies not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says, but rather to what he does not say.”

                                               Kahlil Gibran

Yesterday, I listened to an interview on Fresh Air with an Irish writer, Colm Toibin, whose new book is The Testament of Mary. When asked what he wanted to get across to his reader, he said that most of our communication is not in the words we speak, but in the spaces between the words. Our truth is in what we do not say. This rang true with me. We have learned to be politically correct to such an extent that we rarely speak our honest thoughts.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Judging from my own thoughts, I am sparing the world my pettiness and prejudice by speaking only the cleaned-up version. I suspect that is true for most people. But what we are left with is half truths, and sometimes not even that. If you want to see this in its clearest form, listen to the carefully worded statements of any of our politicians, who develop talking points and coded ways of speaking to deliberately conceal their meaning. It's quite an art, really.

I suppose that learning how to speak without revealing one's honest thoughts is the price paid for living in a civilized society, but it also leads to the niggling suspicion that something is not right. Doubt that people can be trusted to say what they mean and mean what they say. Granted, we would not be happy to hear most of what people really think, but still, we read the untruth in their body language and in their stilted words, and come away questioning their motives. Feeling slightly paranoid is the “new normal,” as everyone is so fond of saying.

I hope that there is at least one person in your life with whom you can be your unvarnished self. It seems to me that if you live in this shadow-land of half-truths and outright lies for long enough, your true self may just slip away undetected. If there is no other human with whom to communicate openly and honestly, write your thoughts down in your journal or on something that you then destroy. It is preferable to know one honest person than none at all. Listen for those spaces and watch the body language—that's where the truth lies.

                                                     In the spirit,

                                                        Jane