.
Not in the extreme sense of saying whatever comes to mind without regard for anyone else, oo. But what if you actually expressed yourself more often instead of constantly shrinking yourself so you don't inconvenience someone else?
There's consideration, even in speech. However, there's an extreme where we try so hard to be a little less too much, for the sake of other people's feelings, that we end up not expressing ourselves at all.
A friend of mine was waiting for me to finish a meeting so we could go home together. I thought the meeting would be brief, and it was supposed to be, but it ended up taking much longer than expected. Eventually, she said she was leaving, and I let her.
Meanwhile, the whole reason she had waited that long was so we could walk home together.
When I messaged her after getting home, she calmly told me she didn't like that, after waiting for me for so long, I allowed her to leave alone when the entire reason she had waited was so we wouldn't have to walk home separately.
She wasn't angry, but she wanted to communicate how she felt. According to her, she'd recently realised that she hardly ever expressed her feelings honestly, and she was deliberately making an effort to talk more about them.
Dearest reader, hearing that made me think.
How many times do we leave things unsaid because we don't want to seem difficult? How often do we convince ourselves that something isn't worth mentioning, that we should just let it slide, or that expressing our displeasure would make us seem unreasonable?
And sometimes, the people around us genuinely have no idea that they've done something that hurt us, because we've become so good at pretending we're fine.
I think there's something beautiful about being able to communicate your feelings without necessarily making a big deal out of everything. You can tell someone you didn't like something without picking a fight. You can express disappointment without being hostile. You can say what you need without feeling guilty for having needs in the first place.
Of course, this isn't an invitation to be inconsiderate or to say every thought that crosses your mind. Not every thought needs to be expressed, but there's a difference between exercising restraint and constantly silencing yourself.
So, what would happen if you said more of what you actually felt? What if you stopped making yourself so easy to accommodate that people never got to know when something wasn't okay with you?
Maybe, just maybe, we'd have more honest relationships, fewer unspoken expectations and a lot less resentment.
Don't you think? đź«Ł
@favvy_Okwansđź–¤
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