I sought clarity. I didn't gain it in any form of true honesty, but I gained it in the way I expected.
Defensiveness means people are too fearful of putting themselves on the line. True honesty is when you can let the barriers down and true honesty is something rarely seen in anyone.
Frankly, partial honesty would be a start. In seeking clarity this evening, I am not entirely sure what I expected to achieve from it and yet I gained a lot. What I really gained was the knowledge that sometimes people, too afraid of their own honesty, will turn things around in a bid to avoid answering things they are not comfortable with. Before you realise it, their issue becomes your issue and sadly, they can believe this to be the truth.
If there is one thing that I am renown, is that I will be entirely honest about my view on you. If I think you are an arrogant arse - I will tell you. If I think you are an arrogant arse that is an arrogant arse because your mother refused to give you ice-cream as a child, I will tell you that too.
What I will never do is tell everyone else that you are an arrogant arse and smile sweetly to your face. It would simply never happen.
Another thing I learnt tonight is that people invairably have hidden agendas. I met someone recently who was so addicted to another person that it bordered on a clinical obsession. A long discussion had ensued where I had voiced the opinion that I simply did not believe that another was as simple, or as hard as appeared on the surface. My experience had not been a parallel and I couldn't agree that it. It clearly didn't go down well as the next evening I was blanked in the street. It would appear that the translation of this conversation was very different.
This, I find fascinating. Someone so addicted that they have befriended as a way of staying close. Someone so alarmed by another having shared some level of closeness that they would feel the need to manipulate a conversation to reflect badly. And someone else, seemingly naive to friendship and of female manipulation, would need to believe something in order to justify their own behaviour. It seems that all have a hidden agenda.
What I realised tonight is that sometimes people are stuck at a certain point. They may well never get past it but their need to deny it, to make behaviour appear acceptable, means they have to twist and turn and dump the blame on someone else's door.
The only clarity that I gained tonight was the one that I already knew. Clarity is not the same as honesty and in a sense, nor does it need to be. Emotional intelligence is of higher value than cognitive intelligence. Fear protects you from absolutely nothing. An ability to be honest is not a weakness, an inability to be honest is.
I also learnt that rumour is something you hear and you believe the bits that you fear most in yourself. If there was a rumour about you with no credence to it, it would be water off a ducks back. If you know it to be true and reflects badly. . . . Ouch.
Reputation is something that you earn from behaviour. Reputation never comes from one rumour. It comes from the experience of others or a multitude of the same rumour.
Question rumour and learn from reputation.
I cannot choose what people believe but I can choose reputation. Sometimes people are so stuck in their behaviour that they can be oblivious to reputation. Sometimes when people try so hard to appear big, it makes them appear really small.
Deflection, defensiveness and inability to be open. What I saw this evening wasn't a kind person, nor was it a person lacking arrogance and no matter how much I believe that deep down is another person, this is the side that reputation is built on. And yet it was their ability to misjudge me that I was more fascinated by.
I was hoping that tonight that I would gain enough clarity to be able to be angry. I failed.
I felt pity.
Such a shame
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