“Water With No Ice: Speaking Your
Truth”
Louisa Wimberger, Worship Associate
July 1, 2007
A few months ago, I met my friend Lea on the downtown mall
for breakfast. It was one of those
beautiful spring mornings – already warm enough to sit outside at
The waitress returned a few minutes later with Lea’s
steaming cup of coffee, and two tall glasses of water, filled to the brim with
ice. She set them both down and I
hesitated for a moment but said nothing.
Lea – who, mind you, grew up in a family that owns four-star restaurants
in
She soon came back to put cream on the table for Lea’s coffee. I considered asking about the water, but figured she was probably just about to get it.
A few minutes later she came back to take our order, but didn’t bring my iceless water. We ordered, and as she gathered our menus into her arms, I said, “Um, if you could when you get a chance, if I could just have that water without ice?”
The waitress looked at me, looked at the glass of water and said, “Oh, well, if you just wait, the ice is gonna melt.”
There was a pause. Lea looked at me, as if to say, Shall I handle this or do you want to? I looked at the water, thinking, Gosh, that’s a lot of ice, while in the back of my mind a little voice said, “Did she really just say that?” Finally, I said, “Yeah . . . I think I want to drink it now, though, if you could just bring another one, that would be great.” Which, eventually, she did, and I gulped half of it down within about five seconds.
For some reason, this interaction stuck with me, and I found myself thinking about it over the coming weeks and, indeed, while David and Leslie were asking us to think about summer sermon topics. I kept wondering, “What was that exchange really about?” One take, of course, is that the waitress was inexperienced and hadn’t yet learned the the-customer-is-always-right rule. That may or may not have been the case. I was more interested in why I was feeling, as I said, sort of sheepish about it. It was no effort for me to simply order the water with no ice; I’ve been doing that for years. But when I didn’t get it that way, Lea spoke for me, and then when I finally asked again, I became a bit smaller – in my body language, in my tone of voice, and in my words.
Now, I order my water with no ice for two reasons – and I realize this may be more information than you ever thought you needed to know, but bear with me. First, I have a really sensitive tooth that hurts like the dickens when I have something cold. For the occasional treat of ice cream? I’m willing to walk through the hellish moments of my tooth screaming at me. It’s totally worth it. For water, which I drink all through the day? Not so much. Second, I’m not much of a sipper. I like to drink my water fast. When it’s super-cold, I can’t do that. Hence, I order water with no ice. It’s never really been a problem.
Forgive me for referencing a romantic comedy, but there’s a great scene in When Harry Met Sally. The two are at a diner, and Sally’s order goes like this:
“I’d like the chef salad, please, with the oil and vinegar on the side. And the apple pie a la mode....But I'd like the pie heated, and I don't want the ice cream on top. I want it on the side. And I'd like strawberry instead of vanilla if you have it. If not, then no ice cream, just whipped cream, but only if it's real. If it's out of a can, then nothing.”
Later, Harry calls her “high maintenance,” and her response is simply, “Well, I just want it the way I want it.”
How often do we speak our truth, really asking for what we want? A special order in a restaurant? A better price on something? A raise?
A more fulfilling relationship?
Time for ourselves?
I consider myself someone who is comfortable in my own skin, able to say comfortably what I need to say in most moments. But even in the course of those few seconds when the water wasn’t coming and I was trying to figure out how to say that I still wanted it, a lot was going on. I thought I don’t want to be “high maintenance.” I don’t want to be a bother. The waitress is busy. Even though it will hurt, I should just suck it up – no pun intended – and just get used to drinking cold water. And yet, obviously, there was also something within me that knew what I needed and wanted. I wanted to respect that, and yet considered being silent about it in order to make things easier for the waitress.
I’m not here today to talk about the temperature of drinks and glitches in the food service industry. But that one interaction has started a conversation among friends and colleagues about ways in which we avoid speaking our truth. My belief is that, if we can use our UU principle to honor the inherent worth and dignity in every person – starting with ourselves – we can become more in touch with our own truth. Just knowing it is one step – although it might take moments to know it or years, and there is no ‘magic gizmo,’ as Bob mentioned. Speaking it – which, contrary to how it might sound, can come in forms other than actually speaking – can be the next step. This process can be freeing, ultimately, and can deepen our connections with ourselves, the world, and those with whom we are in relationship.
A couple of disclaimers: First, when I say “your” truth, “my” truth, or “our” truth, I am not saying it is THE truth. I acknowledge that there is no one truth. Second, every one of you knows yourself better than anyone else does, and I fully trust your ability to know what is reasonable to risk and what’s not. I know this can be risky – and in some situations might even involve our own safety. Even apart from that, there is a whole host of reasons to keep our truth to ourselves. We fear rejection, judgment, other people’s reactions. We fear looking foolish or different. There is a huge range of ways we can speak our truth, and some are much scarier than others. This is simply an invitation.
So, there are the seemingly small ways we can know and speak our truth. It might be the way we ask for something at a restaurant. It might be saying how you want to spend your Saturday, or being clear that you need help with something – on a project at work or an upcoming move or a relationship issue. It might involve being clear that no, I really don’t want a second glass of wine, or saying NO to something someone asks you to do. It might be answering HONESTLY when someone says, “How are you?”
Children are great at this. They make no bones about what they want at any given hour of the day, and don’t apologize for it. I work part-time as an assistant director at a tiny Montessori school for three- to six-year-olds, and we often see children arriving in all manner of . . . shall we say . . . clothing ensembles. I’ll never forget the day in April, when Martha arrived wearing many parts of her Halloween costume – a leopard-print leotard with a tail, and black tights. When a parent greeting her by saying ,”Martha! Is that your Halloween costume?!” Martha simply looked up and said, “This is what I’m wearing today.” And wearing it she was. Martha hadn’t yet learned to fear other people’s judgments or reactions. May she never.
My friend Jenny has an internationally-acclaimed website with a blog that is read by many people every day online. One thing she wrote about recently is her collection of very fancy vintage dresses. She recently wrote on her blog that we shouldn’t wait for a reason to wear our nicest outfits – that we need to create the occasion. The truth is, Jenny wants to wear her dresses even if there is no apparent reason. She goes grocery shopping in sequins and pearls, and if her five-year-old son wants to accompany her in a second-hand tux and sneakers, he’s welcome to do so. And why not? I find it so refreshing to read her blog entries, and to spend time with her. Her freedom to throw things together in such a way inspires me to throw caution to the wind more often than I usually would. I’m grateful that Jenny is so true to herself.
My mostly-full-time work is as a greeting card designer. I often meet with brides who are planning their weddings. They often ask me about the “rules” and the wedding etiquette guidelines. They say things like, “How are we supposed to word this?” and “It’s not okay to just ask people to RSVP on the phone, right? We have to send out reply cards? And they have to be with envelopes, not just postcards, don’t they?” When I first started doing this for a living, I used to refer them to different bridal magazines for the answers. But, over the past few years, I’ve instead tried to just pause with them and say, “It’s your wedding. It’s your wedding. What do you want to do? Despite what the magazines want you to believe, there is no one in charge saying This is the right way and This is the wrong way – you get to decide. What is true about what you want?” It’s amazing how much fear there is about doing the wrong thing and being frowned upon – by relatives, by friends, by Martha Stewart or Emily Post – and how hard it makes it for the actual bride and groom to get in touch with how THEY can do it to give their wedding their own special mark.
Perhaps clothing choices and wedding invitations seem irrelevant in the scheme of things. But the smaller dishonesty can diminish us, which, which can grow into diminishing ourselves on a much larger scale. I can’t help but wonder how different things might feel if people took steps in this direction more often.
On a more global level, speaking our truth can be a way of dealing with world events we feel strongly about, or which are clearly not a representation of OUR truth. I am an American, and yet I don’t support much of what our government is doing. I often feel helpless in this regard. Like many people at this church, my friend Liz is so committed to going to rallies, gathering signatures for various petitions, and picketing at protests. When I asked her about her work in these areas, she wrote to me, “I give up my dream of being able to force world peace and I think about what I personally CAN control. I will not wallow in my own psychic pollution if I’m speaking out. Going to rallies actually seems like an indulgence because I get to feel hopeful, and like I’m not alone. I hate making phone calls, but the only thing I hate more is getting mad at the talking heads on TV and not doing anything.”
I mentioned earlier that speaking one’s truth doesn’t always have to come in the form of speaking. Along these lines, and still on a more global/political level, I think about someone like Rosa Parks. She knew her truth and spoke it through sitting. In her autobiography, she wrote,
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People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in. |
Parker Palmer, author of a book entitled Let Your Life Speak, says:
Where does one get the courage to ‘sit down at the front of the bus’ in a society that punishes anyone who decides to live divided no more? After all, conventional wisdom recommends the divided life as the safe and sane way to go: Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve. Don’t make a federal case out of it. These are all the clichéd ways we tell each other to keep personal truth apart from public life, lest we make ourselves vulnerable . . .What Parks’ did was her way of saying, “I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth that I hold deeply on the inside. I will no longer act as if I were less than the whole person I know myself inwardly to be.”
I will no longer act as if I were less than the whole person I know myself inwardly to be. Inherent worth and dignity indeed.
Asking a waitress to leave the ice cubes out and risking one’s life on a bus to help galvanize the Civil Rights Movement are obviously very different ways in which knowing and voicing one’s truth can manifest itself. But where I think this concept has its most exciting potential is perhaps somewhere in the middle – in our interpersonal relationships and day-to-day interactions.
Along these lines, another friend knows me so well that she can TELL when I’m not being honest with myself or with her. We might have plans to do something, and when she calls to say, “We actually had another idea, too . . . how about this instead?” and she’ll launch into a description of a completely different night than we’d originally planned. My response is, “Um, sure, that sounds fine, too . . .” and she’ll immediately say, “Lulu, that’s your thin voice. I know it from a mile away. Tell me the truth.” My thin voice. It’s the same one I used when I was asking the waitress for that water again. This particular friend recognizes the little shrinking act I go through to avoid causing someone’s discomfort or disappointment. But the thing is, she really wants me to say the truth. We like to know where the other one stands. From there, we can decide if we want to spend the time together or change our plans.
And here’s the thing – outcome is actually not the important part of speaking one’s truth. The being real with each other along the way is. It helps deepen intimacy, this truth-speaking, because I don’t have to fake anything around them. Which means they don’t have to be fake around me. We can meet each other where we are at any given moment.
My mom is 80. She has five daughters spanning twenty years – I’m 37 and my sister is 57. Raising us over that many years gave her an amazing ability to “keep up with the times” to some extent. She has lived through so many things and, even though she and I are from generations further apart than most people are from their parents, she seems to have grown and changed along with each of my sisters and me. Mom was NOT raised to speak her truth; I imagine most of her female peers were encouraged to just keep the peace.
She’s been struggling lately with my brother-in-law. Nothing enormous, but something that comes up for her repeatedly, and she always talks to me about it. I’m happy to listen and offer my own perspective, but I often ask her, “Have you talked to him about it?” To this she replies, “Oh, well, no, I don’t want to make him feel bad.”
I feel certain that my brother-in-law would be very open to hearing my mom if she were to simply say, “When you do this, I feel this.” I don’t encourage her to say something so that he will automatically change what he’s doing – although I actually do think there is a very strong chance he would (he’s not intentionally hurting her). But again – outcome is not the important part. Don Miguel Ruiz, in the book The Four Agreements, writes, “Being impeccable with your word . . . means to use your energy in the direction for truth and love for yourself.” What’s important is that my mom respects her own needs and regards herself enough to be able to speak her truth, without apology. I think it would be a huge step in the direction of love for herself, and the icing on the cake may be a closer, more authentic relationship with her son-in-law.
Mom may be starting to consider it, and I find that
inspiring. I GET inspired around people
who speak their truth. Author Anne
Lamott, known best for her memoirs rather than her fiction, is incredibly adept
at taking something she felt ashamed of, at one point, and writing about it
with self-compassion and even humor. She
writes freely about moments as a single parent who has, shall we say,
less-than-peaceful thoughts when her child won’t stop crying for hours. She puts right out there her struggles to
overcome jealousy of another writer who is writing just one bestseller after
another. She just seems to be so very
herself – like she can’t even help it – that it inspired me to write her a
letter, to thank her for speaking her truth, even when it seemed unsavory or
risky, because it seems to have the effect of opening up the door for others to
do the same. I saw it happen with my
students in a writing class at the time.
She wrote me back – sent me a postcard from
Thanks for your lovely kind letter! You keep being imperfect in
Lamott actually recently reviewed a bestselling
book called Eat Pray Love, a memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert.
Near the beginning of the book, the author tells us of her
heart-wrenching moments coming to the truth that, despite what everyone around
her assumed, she actually did NOT want to be married to her husband anymore,
and did NOT want a baby. In fact, every
time a pregnancy test came back negative, she was grateful and relieved. She writes,
I don’t want to be married anymore. I was trying so hard not to know this, but
the truth kept insisting itself to me. I
don’t want to be married anymore. I
don’t want to live in this big house. I
don’t want to have a baby. But I was supposed to want to
have a baby. How could I turn back now,
though? Everything was in place. This was supposed to be the year.
This scene was a turning point in her life,
simply because she spoke the truth to herself, and would soon speak it to her
husband, her family, her friends. I
loved reading this passage so much – not because I could relate – in fact, I
really do want those things – but because when I read about her coming
to the ‘truth that kept insisting itself’ to her, I felt happy for her – that
she has been freed as a result of allowing it to come to the surface and have a
voice. I could almost feel her huge
exhalation as she moved through that episode.
Just reading about it made me want to commit myself to having more
self-awareness, and not to be afraid of telling myself the truth.
Do you listen to that inner voice that
insists itself to you? Can you strip
away other people’s expectations and guidelines to get to the heart of
something for yourself? When you find
yourself choosing your words a little too carefully with someone, what’s really
going on? Check in with yourself. Try to “touch your truth,” as Bob mentioned
earlier. It is in there. Only you can know it.
What a contribution we can make to the world – to each other – by being who we truly are, our authentic selves. In A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson writes, “Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine.” The more we can know what the truth is for us – in any given moment, on a large scale or what seems to be the tiniest of scales – we are affirming our dignity and our worth and our value.
So come. Come as you are. Bring your full self to the table. At a restaurant, at a meeting, in a relationship – speak your truth as a step toward honoring and loving yourself and those around you. In the words of Mary Oliver, announce YOUR place in the family of things.
May it be so.