It was 1987 and a friend of mine, Vincent, was in the hospital. He had been diagnosed with HIV and back then, it meant that it would progress to AIDS and he wouldn’t be around for much longer.
There were no cocktails to fight the virus and the only drug available was reportedly killing people at the same time that it was prolonging their lives.
My friend had contracted an AIDS related opportunistic infection called Pneumocystis Pneumonia. He knew that his days were limited and he made some phone calls while I was sitting with him. He
was arranging dates and times for people he knew to visit him, but after he called one particular person, I was surprised. “I thought you didn’t like him very much,” I said.
“I don’t,” he said, “but what ifmaking peace with him is the last thing I have to do here? I need to speak up. I don’t want to miss anything.” If there was an afterlife, he
didn’t want to take any dark energy with him.
Over the next week, Vincent saw friends who were dear to him to say good-bye but he also saw a few who were not. He had some difficult conversations but each time someone left, they looked lighter and more at peace. And so did he. It was a gift to him hut it was also a gift to his friends. He had made the choice between war and peace. He wanted to forgive and if he couldn’t get there, at least he knew he had made the effort.
One afternoon, when I left his room and I was walking down the hospital corridor on my way to the elevators, I had an epiphany. What if I did what my friend was doing right now? What if I didn’t
wait until I was on my death bed? What if I made sure that each time I left someone or ended a phone call, nothing was left unsaid? I decided to treat each phone call or meeting as if it were the last one, as if I would never see that person again and I didn’t want anything unfinished hanging in the air. I wanted to use my words, as we tell children, to speak up and say what needed to be said.
That became my spiritual practice and it still is. I don’t wait to say what I want to say. Within reason of course. If something that I want to say will be unnecessarily hurtful, I work it out for myself. I don’t want to use my words as a weapon. I want to use them as a way to honor another human being and to stand up for myself.
Knowing who you are and speaking up for yourself is a step along the path to self-acceptance. My job as a writing coach is not about teaching punctuation, spelling or sentence structure. An editor can take care of that. My job is to help writers find their voices, the expression that differentiates one person’s writing from the next. That’s one of the elements that makes ghostwriting so challenging. I have to find someone else’s voice and write in it. When I decided to stop ghostwriting and write for myself,
it took me some time to find my own voice again. But I have it now and it’s a great relief.
I know someone who has been in the habit of repeating what other people say for so long, she seems to have lost touch with her own opinions and ideas. That’s a form of oral plagiarism I try to think carefully and form my own opinions. Sometimes they’re unpopular but they’re mine and I stand
behind them. I say yes to the things that I want, and I to say no to what I don’t want.
When I left the the ballet bubble and I was trying to get to know myself as a civilian, I went to a play with a friend. During intermission, she asked me, “Did you like the first half?”
“Yes. I did,” I said. “Did you like it?”
“Not really,” she said,
“I didn’t really like it either,” I said.
The truth was that I didn’t know. I could have said that I was only just learning how to form opinions about things that weren’t arabesques or grand jetes. But I felt embarrassed. I could have said that too.
Expecting someone to be a mind reader doesn’t end well. Give them a chance to know you better and to understand you. Not speaking up can be destructive and punishing. All we have to do is tell people what we’re thinking and wanting and listen to what they’re thinking and wanting. If you want the same things, it can be bonding and comforting. If you want different things, it can be interesting and
stimulating. Either way, you’ll feel lighter and more genuine.
A renowned motivational speaker said quite simply, “If you don’t like it, say something.”
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