I have written about grace before but now I’m expanding the idea a bit to speaking with love and grace. We seem to live in a world full of judgment for ourselves and for other people. And finding some grace feels needed. Without love and grace our words can be cruel and harsh. I have been thinking about a quote from Catherine Segars, “Love without truth is a lie, but truth without love is a weapon.” As well as something I heard from Emmanual Acho on a podcast several years ago, in which he said something like the importance of speaking truth with love and grace. Just how cruel and harsh it is to speak any kind of truth without love and grace. Especially when truth can be rather subjective. At least with love and grace there is a compassionate lens when we are speaking.
Truth
What exactly is this idea of truth? Traditionally there were some agreed upon facts but what I’m addressing here is more of our personal truths. How each of us see our lives and what we have personally experienced. This is a slippery topic since we all see ourselves and the world with our own personal bias. We all have our own perception and point of view.
I would imagine each of us have truths we hold about ourselves and other people that are not based on any particular fact, but more out of a belief. These beliefs are based on what we have learned throughout our life. So maybe these truths we hold are just based on our personal perspective of what beliefs we hold.
Speaking Truth
Our truths are very subjective. So, we need to make sure we are compassionate when we speak our truth, and we need to do it with love and grace. People will speak their truth but don’t always recognize it is a certain version or perspective. Often it is their point of view. As we speak about truth it has become very clear to me the importance of always speaking with love and grace. When it is not present that truth certainly becomes weaponized. If the goal is not to harm the other person, it certainly should be considered. If the goal is to have the other person understand our point of view, then love and grace are needed. Otherwise, it comes out as one person telling the other person they are wrong with a list of reasons.
Without love and grace
When someone does speak their truth without love and grace it can be a weapon for sure. It feels like the purpose of their truth is to hurt and be cruel. I’m not sure everyone is always aware or even means this level of cruelty when they do it. We all see the world through our own perspective. Which is our point of view and certainly can be distorted. We should all be careful not to tell someone else how they are feeling or what is wrong with them. We don’t actually have a fricking idea what anyone else is feeling or going through. There can be a level of arrogance when this is done. And you just might be completely wrong about the situation.
Is It About Being Right?
There are times when truth doesn’t feel like it is even important as much of being right. It feels like sometimes people just want to justify their choices by throwing out their version of the truth. This is definitely when it feels like truth it being used as a weapon. The purpose is only justifying and throwing down. There is no intent of understanding. It certainly lacks love and grace.
Love/Grace
What is love and grace? How do we exactly incorporate this into our truth. For me it is speaking with kindness, compassion, and mindfulness. Truth is important to our relationship especially if we want people to know who we truly are. But does truth then need to have purpose? It shouldn’t be about telling someone else they suck but maybe it should be more sharing ourselves with someone else. How something is making us feel a certain way. It is sharing ourselves which embraces connection.
If it is done with the intent on embracing connection, it is saying this situation made me feel unappreciated, disregarded or whatever the feelings/emotions are present. It is not about criticizing the other person. It is not about declaring you and only you know the truth of a particular situation. It is recognizing that we can never completely see all sides of anything.
Not A 360 Degree View
We all need some awareness that what we see is very much our perspective of the world. It is no means a full circle around us. We must recognize we can only see a small piece of a situation at a given time. We are looking at each situation through our little window. We can truly only know ourselves completely. That is with some deep diving and exploring. If just knowing ourselves takes some work, can we really expect to know another person completely?
We can never walk in someone else’s shoes so when we are speaking our truth about something that happened, can we really have a complete picture? We are not all-knowing beings. If we can put our arrogance down and embrace some love and grace, we just might gain understanding as well as the other person might have some understanding of us.
“All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.”
Eckhart Tolle
Final Thoughts
Speaking with love and grace is also important when we speak to ourselves. To hold space for ourselves and remain self-compassionate. It will allow room for growth and far less harshness. With a greater understanding of ourselves, we will hopefully open up ourselves up to greater understanding of others.
When love and grace are not present there is a lot of judgement and a bit of self-righteousness that you somehow have some benefit to the truth that no one else does. When we do speak our truth then we should be open to the fact it is only our perception. If we keep our heart open when we speak our truth with love and grace, then we will be open to what the other person has to say. Maybe then we will be open to a better understanding of each other. Just maybe that is what speaking with love and grace really means.
Photo by Mark Pan4ratte, Lauren Ferstl, and JoelValve on Unsplash.
Blog, “Self-Compassion Enhances Us”, https://illuminationcounselingservice.com/2024/02/02/self-compassion-enhances-us/
