Thinking about the Truth

This is the Noh mask for Raiden or Ikazuchi, the personification of Thunder.


I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword. I will tell the truth wherever I please. ~ Mother Jones

I was musing in my car as I was driving home today about what would happen if we all simply told each other what we were really thinking most of the time. Would anybody still talk to anybody else? And if we're thinking these things, why aren't we acting on them?

There is a certain type of person who is forever asking me, "What are you thinking?" They then proceed to sit and stare at me like I am some sort of divine guru out of whose mouth jewels of wisdom are about to fall. It's creepy as all get out. I feel like a sideshow performer. It's sort of like, "Hey, give the monkey a banana and see if she'll do another trick." I don't know why these people seem to get such a huge charge out of this, exactly. It seems that I don't quite see things the way everybody else does, maybe, and that's amusing to some. Maybe it's a bit like paying your fifty cents and going inside a funhouse or something. Who really knows?

What I usually do is get sort of flustered, find a way to turn the conversation down a side alley, and do either the verbal version or the physical version of running away. After all, my thoughts are my own very private universe, and it's not really any of their damn business, is it? There are very few people I know well enough to open my truest self up to; most people get the equivalent of a Japanese Noh mask. Is that a dishonesty? It's not "not-me" that they see; it's just perhaps just not the fullest version of me. Everybody is this way, I'm sure... Right?

What I want to do when I'm asked that question lately, though, is smile my most dangerous smile and take off the gloves, the mask, and just answer them. "What are you thinking right now?" Hmm...well, let me just tell you. I'm thinking about how hard it is not to reach up and slap you. I'm thinking about how much I'd like to be at home on my couch reading a good book instead of trapped here in this conversation with you. Conversely, it might be something more pleasant: I'm thinking about what his lips might taste like, feel like pressed to mine during a first kiss or what the view looks like right now from the dancing balcony at Kyomizuydera. It could be really nothing at all, in fact. I'm thinking I have to go to Wal-Mart and get cat food or I'm going to have really angry animals at home tonight. I'm thinking the air has gone out of that stupid back tire again. So rarely is the truth provocative or even mildly interesting....

There are times, though, when telling the truth about what one is thinking is critical. I spent too many years holding back my true feelings about things, thinking for some reason that I was not entitled to express those feelings, that I didn't have the right to those emotions, particularly the ones related to being angry about things or upset. If something made me mad, I tucked it away. It was my fault. I did it. If somebody hurt my feelings, I turned it inward. It took me a long time to learn that everybody has a right to tell the truth sometimes, and that truth may involve being legitimately, righteously hacked off about something. It took me a long time to see that telling that truth was a better way of dealing with something that trying to shove it all in a box inside me and ignore it.

I try to live my life by the quote at the top of this entry now. I don't run around bashing people over the head with "The Truth" like a club, but if you ask me, I'm pretty much going to tell you, yes, even if the answer is about that kiss or the cat food I need from Wal-Mart if I know you well enough. If not, you may have to settle for the Noh mask smile. That is another kind of truth, and while you may not find it satisfying, I guess sometimes you should probably just consider yourself lucky and move on.