“How old are you?”
“What do you believe about God?”
“Who’d you vote for?”
“What do you think about sex?”
You know all those sayings about the two things you should never ask a woman? Have you ever heard someone warn you about the ‘two things you never discuss at dinner’ with your family? Have you ever heard the whispers and half-truths about ‘that thing people do in bed?’
From age to weight, religion to politics, and relationships to sex. There are so many things we rarely say, so many topics that lay in the dark in silence. So many things that are waiting to be said.
Why are we scared to talk about who we are? What we want? How we feel? Why are we so timid and tentative in talking about what we believe, and our values?
Why is it so easy to spend our time talking about the weather? Work? Our families and friends? Our tasks and daily life? Why is it so hard to talk about the things below the surface, so hard to talk about what really matters to us?
Why do we shy away from topics that are so ‘hot button’ or ‘taboo’? What are we really afraid of?
Do we really keep silent about things that really matter to us because we don’t want to offend someone? Because we don’t know how to say it ‘the right way’? Because we don’t know if we’ll be understood? Because somehow we’re dirty or vile if we bring it up? Because we don’t want to have to feel like we need to hear anyone else out? Because we’ll get into an argument, and it might get ugly?
Whether you’re a racial or a gender minority, whether you’re religious, spiritual, or otherwise. Whether you’re a democrat, republican, tea party, independent or some other political branch. Whether you are homosexual, heterosexual, transgender, always stone-cold-sober, drug addict, or alcoholic. Whether you are a virgin, promiscuous, closed off or very open to intimacy of any kind. Intelligent, emotional, rigid, loose, understanding, or not. There are a lot of things out there that we don’t want to hear because they make us uncomfortable.
But for whatever reason, there’s a lot more that we don’t want to say…for the very same reasons.
Maybe we’ll stick out in a crowd. Maybe we’ll be a minority instead of one of the herd. Maybe we’ll be labeled intolerant, or a certain way that we don’t like. Maybe we’ll be placed in a category of people that are looked down on. Maybe we’ll be rejected. Maybe we’ll be scorned. Maybe we’ll be silenced or shunned. Maybe we’ll have to listen to someone else’s’ diatribe or soapbox.
Or maybe we’ll open the doors…and see the throngs of people who are waiting to speak.
I know most of you have heard me say or seen me write this hundreds of times. There is no denying the fact. We, us people, humanity, we were made to be in relationships. The truth is, however, that when we don’t talk about those things. When we don’t hear them from others. We not only hide ourselves, we shut others out. When we shut others out, true relationship cannot exist.
And we, in our truest and deepest parts of ourselves, were made for so much more then silence.
