When you do speak out or speak up...

Is it ever alright to feel angry at someone? Is it every alright to be upset or disappointed? How about when its a positive thing and you are embarrassed? I have two examples of what I am talking about here and the choices I made in response to them. I invite comments.

Lets say you work with someone and perhaps you didn't start out on the best terms but your relationship has much improved since. Now imagine that their job is vital and that having confidence in their work is a challenge because of all the things that happened in the past with them. The time they messed up something and then this other time when the ball was dropped, yet another time when they didn't follow through or whatever. So you use this information to tell a story. There could have been plenty of times they came through for you, but still this story and its many moving parts are boiled down to a sentence or phrase or two that makes its way into the ears of your sort-of work friends ears. Your co worker then is reprimanded for it but they were told that it was you who brought it up, you who complained. How will you react to this person when you see them again?

Second and different scenario. Imagine that you have a friend of the opposite sex. You met through a mutual friend and after that friend moved, the two of you continue to hang out. Things are moving along fine until one day you realize that you have feelings for this person and it is more than friendship. You struggle internally to decide whether or not it is worth sacrificing a really great friendship to admit that you want to be more than friends. There are many things to consider, but the heart knows what the heart knows and no amount of logical thinking can remove it. So maybe you muster up the courage to do the bare minimum in regard to "outing" yourself, you shoot a text message that states that you wished you could have kissed them, and that's perhaps why it "feels weird" sometimes. You usually hang out every Saturday night. How will you face that person when you do see them?

In both cases, being honest and speaking the truth exposed my feelings but also had an impact on the people around me, on the subjects at hand. Simply, speaking out moved the plot forward, though in both situations only my perspective of the truth was applied.

I want to tell my co-worker thank you for allowing me to see that I have been putting this road block in front of you because of the lowered expectations I have of you, it is unfair that I have not noticed or recognized those times when you helped me. But at the same time, I see that this lack of trust in your performance can be changed because I know you are capable. I love you and thank you for all the times you got it perfect.

In the second case, I was finally able to speak the truth that had been burning a hole inside of me for a little while. The real question remains, why do I feel embarrassed to have feelings for someone? Why do I feel wrong about it? Shouldn't I feel excited and happy like I really did find something special? Instead something in side of me says, uh oh, you did it again didn't you.

What is wrong with me that I feel wrong for falling in love? That I feel sad about it. Perhaps it rests in these old belief systems that tell me that I am not worthy of love for such and such a reason. They won't like me back for this and this reason. If they liked me then yadda yadda yadda, you get the drift. Instead of just saying, listen friend, this is how I feel what do you think about that and then being brave enough to find out what the answer is, opposed to guessing what the answer will be and being afraid of it.

I will no longer be ashamed for feeling how I feel. I am not afraid that you will not feel the same way, but I do consider it a possibility. Whatever the outcome, know that I love you and think so highly of you that I would want to be paired with you. You are special in my eyes. Thank you for showing me that I still have some fear and now that it is visible, I can let it go.

I suppose it doesn't really matter either way how the situations unfold, only how I chose to react and then digest the information. How will I use this new information to form and shape my decisions moving forward, for isn't that the ever present challenge. Eventually I will leave the confines of these specific lessons and move into more and more profound and potentially challenging ones, but for now, one breath at a time. One download of data at a time, piece by piece building the story that will one day be my life. Hopefully, it will not boil down to a two or three sentence summation defining one small glimpse of a single perspective.