From the veranda
The problem is pretending
ISSUE NINE | Real and Pretend
Back in 2007, when I was with Good Life in Jamaica, I helped plan our weekly events. I did the setup. I did the list. And when the crowds came, I sat outside in my car, crying, because I could not make myself walk in. If somebody came out and asked, I would have said I was fine. I was not fine. I was terrified of a room full of people I liked.
I have been thinking about that car this week, because this issue is about the difference between real and pretend, and I lived both of them in one evening.
Most of us have a pretty clear picture of who we are. We know what we value. We know what we meant. And most of the time we are sincere about it. But what we meant does not always tell us how we actually function. You can believe you are a good listener and still cut people off when you feel misunderstood. You can value honesty and still make it hard for anyone to tell you the truth. I believed I wanted to be a people person, so why was I hiding in the car?
Realth is interested in that difference, between who you believe you are and who shows up. Not to call you out, but because relationships happen in what other people experience of us, not in what we intended.
Say a man tells everyone he is easygoing, and he means it. Let's call him Johnny. Now ask the people who live with Johnny. They will tell you they check his mood before they ask him anything, and they have learned which subjects to leave alone. Johnny is not lying. If you ask Johnny who he is, you get "easygoing." If you ask the people who love him what it is like to be around him, you get "scary." Both are true. The second one tells you what to work on.
So the question Realth keeps asking is not "Who are you?" It is "How do you function?" Or, in plainer words, what do you actually do when you feel hurt, needed, told no, or loved? The first question invites you to describe yourself. The second asks you to look at what tends to happen, again and again.
Now, I am not saying being real means you say every thought out loud and show every feeling. Healthy people adjust. We read the room, we pick our timing, we are kind when we are tired. Holding your tongue at a funeral is not pretending. That is performing, and most of us perform a little every day. You did the kind thing even when you did not feel like it.
Pretending is different. Pretending is making believe. You act out something that is not there. "I'm fine" when you are in the car. "I don't care" when you care so much it hurts. "That's my boundary" when what you mean is "I don't want to be uncomfortable." None of those is automatically a problem, and sometimes they are just words. But sometimes the words we use about ourselves are there so we never have to look at what is hiding under them, and what hides under there is very hard to face.
This is why Realth starts with you, before it ever gets to the other person. You bring yourself into every room, your history, your fears, what you learned about getting close and what you learned about protecting yourself. Before you can understand what is happening between you and someone else, you need some ability to notice what is happening in you. Can you tell what you are feeling? Can you separate what happened from the story you told yourself about it?
Nobody gets this right all the time, and I am not asking you to. When who you think you are and what you actually did do not match, you have not failed anything. That is the whole point of Realth: to identify where you are today and the work that needs to be done.
Something to try before next Friday. Pick one sentence you say about yourself. "I'm a giver." "I'm easygoing." "I'm independent." Then think back over this week, in one relationship, and check what actually happened. Not what you meant. What happened. If the sentence and the week match, good. If they do not, you have found your first real thing to look at, and I would love to hear what it was. Reply to this email and tell me.
Next Friday: why any of this matters.
The Work You Hide is the book I wrote about my own hiding. It is out now.
Talk soon, Deb.
"Realth lives in you, shows up in your relationships, and shapes the world you leave behind."