Let Monday Be Truth Day

Keeping relationships 'horizontal' is a great way to be more yourself

How much not quite the full truth are you carrying around on any given day?

Can you think of anyone that you need or would like to say something to, but you just haven’t gotten around to it?

Is there something that you’ve felt the need or desire to say or share, but then the moment slips by—and the feeling along with it, sometimes not to return for weeks, months, or even years?

Is there something you’ve been meaning to bring up, but you just haven’t found the right time?

All of these are examples of what I call emotional overhead—the weight of the unexpressed fullness of what you are feeling, what is, and what wants to be expressed.

Not everything needs to be expressed immediately, but ignoring or repressing things that want to be said takes energy—that is energy of your self, psychic and emotional energy that could be used more productively otherwise if you weren’t carrying the burden of what’s left unsaid.

The truth wants to be spoken, and when it’s not, it often results in a visceral feeling something stuck inside me that wants to get out. It creates disquiet, anxiety, and a sense of urgency. It’s something hanging over me that I know, deep down, that I will have to deal with at some point, and that will cause me distress until I do.

In the past I’ve often waited and hoped that someone else would speak up first. I felt betrayed, insulted, and injured by those who I felt owed me more truth, and yet it was me who felt that something needed to be said, so why would I expect someone else say it first?

I didn’t have the presence, the courage, the voice that I needed. I wasn’t my self enough to speak with confidence. It’s also true that, as with everything else, we get good at what we do. I lacked practice.

A few years ago, nearing the age of fifty and feeling this need to saying something arise yet again, I dug deeper. Whereas in the past I might have sat with the anger that came from the words not spoken, now I allowed the words to take shape.

In this case, it was a set of questions that I wanted and needed to ask my parents. I let myself spell it out silently, to myself. “Did you know what I was actually doing at the age of fourteen, fifteen, sixteen? Did you know how much I was drinking, and that I was using speed? Did you know how much damage I was doing to myself? And, if you did know, why didn’t you say anything? And, if you didn’t know—how could you not have known?” Most of all, I simply wanted to know whether they had known.

Once I had the shape of the words I asked myself: what was my resistance to speaking them? What was I afraid of?

What I found was that I was afraid of disturbing the peace, of upsetting them, of their reaction—and I also knew that the peace was uninteresting, that the peace was not serving me, or us—that I needed to ask this question, and that I would be doing no harm by asking it. I realized then that I actually had no resistance, other than my fear of going into unfamiliar ground. My fear dissolved. I was no longer afraid, and I found myself excited to speak, and to hear their response.

Something else that helped me get past my resistance was to practice first in a closed environment—visualizing myself asking them, and then sharing my question with others—in particular, other men—as friends and in groups.

As I’ve seen so many times, and here yet again, fear is just a message—and turning towards fear often transmutes it into excited anticipation.

I also know that I respond well to deadlines—and so it occurred to to me to give myself one for the truth. With the questions well formed in my mind, I resolved that if I didn’t come across some real reason not to speak by Monday, I would speak on Monday. The phrase scrolled across the screen of my consciousness: Let Monday be Truth Day. I felt a sense of calm relief, and of open interest in what could happen.

Monday came. I asked, and they answered, and we had a deeper, more interesting, and more healing conversation on the subject than we had ever had before.

I’ve used this same technique countless times since then. I’ve become increasingly sensitive to the subtle feeling of something being unsaid building up within me, and accustomed to acknowledging it, perhaps letting it simmer for a few days more with the light of awareness upon it, and then clearing the overhead by speaking the truth.

What I’ve come to realize more recently is that truth is a form of energy. If I resist, if I hold it inside, the energy remains bound up within me, and I feel frustrated, anxious, resentful, and angry. In resistance, I come to resent the truth that I have to hold alone. I roll it endlessly in my mouth like a jawbreaker that never shrinks. It creates an aching in my gut, disturbs my sleep, and gnaws at my focus.

When I express what needs to be said, this energy is released. No longer bound inside, the “truth” that is simply some part of what is my self is let out of the prison of my own inner world, free to be in dialogue with other energies, and transmuting into a creative force. This is how we make art—by expressing the energy of our selves into the world, where it can be seen, reflected, and integrated.

So now, when I feel this anxious energy within me, I remind myself that I’m here to tell the truth. I dig for clarity, and if I haven’t found the courage or the right time beforehand, I let Monday be Truth Day.

I’ve found this practice to have another dramatic benefit. Not only does it remind me of the value of expressing myself, speaking the truth frees up space in my psyche for more to emerge. With less psychic debt to carry, I am lighter and more free.

Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi refer to this in The Courage to be Disliked in the context of what they call horizontal and vertical relationships. Their position is that “all problems are interpersonal relationship problems” (think about that for a minute!), and that we can avoid interpersonal problems by paying close attention to emerging verticality—that is, putting oneself above or below another—in our relating, and working to keep all of our relationships horizontal. Relationships of equals, at the same level, between peers do not generate this emotional overhead, while vertical relationships always create it and perpetuate it.

If in my relating I sense that I’ve left something unsaid, or that there was something that I wish that I had had the presence to say, then I will also feel the relationship drifting towards verticality. Similarly, if I notice the feeling of being higher or lower in a relationship, it’s usually a sign that something is not being said.

I now know that the way to rectify this is to bring truth back into the field as quickly as possible. Even if the larger truth is still unclear, just naming the fact that I feel that something is unspoken helps to keep things horizontal.

If you know what it feels like to carry this burden of the unsaid and the less than true, compare that to the feeling of having said your peace. The first is anxious, tight, bound up, heavy, burdened, and closed. The latter is calm, open, light, generative, and free.

Imagine what it would feel like to feel that freedom all the time—and Let Monday Be Truth Day.

This is part of a series of short meditations, mantras and mottoes that appear on my Substack along with my memoir in progress, essays, and podcast.

Some questions for you

1. How does it feel to you to carry something that needs to be said?

2. What does it feel like to be free of that burden?

3. Care to share an experience you’ve had of speaking something that you had been carrying for some time?

4. Is there anything that you’re carrying right now that needs to be expressed?

Please share with someone you love…

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