Weekly Assignment
Week Two: Right Speech Experiment
For the past couple of days I have been listening more closely to what I say and the way I talk. Although thinking so much before I talked often had an impact on my words, I still noticed that I often failed to be truthful.
First, on Wednesday morning my mom yelled from my kitchen to my second flor bedroom asking if I was out of bed yet. I was sleeping, and her yelling woke me up. I groaned back, "Yes!" I lied because I didn't want to get in trouble, but I also did not want to upset her. I have six brothers and sisters, so she can get obviously very stressed at times. While I lied for my own benifit, I feel that i did it more to ease my mom's stress.
Then later that day, a friend of mine called my cell phone. Although i consider him a friend, he can get very annoying at times. I decided that I wouldn't pick up the phone. He called again, and I ignored the ringing. Then he called my house, and brother answered the phone. He told me that my friend was on the phone, and told my brother to tell him that I wasn't home. I realize that I was being a jerk. Perhaps I should have talked to him. I feel bad about lying to him, but at the same time I know that if I did something with him that night, he'd want to spend the night and then stay at my house and then never want to leave.
While being mindful of how I talk, I realized some patterns in the way that I talk. I am often sarcastic, and I exaggerate a lot. I see both of these as very serious roadblocks to becoming a man of truth. I am usually sarcastic with my little brothers and sisters. Sometimes my sister will ask me something like "Can I go get some water?" and I'll just look at her blankly and say, "...Nope." She thinks I'm being serious and won't drink water until I tell her that it's okay to. I think this is an issue for me because I do not take truth as seriously as I should. Sarcasm in a way denounces the truth. It gives it a sense of worthlessness. I think I need to start saying things the way they are, and not expressing reality in a biased way.
I also exaggerate often. I didn't expect to be taken seriously when I told my mom that I was stuck in traffic for eight hours. As a habit I have started to use exaggeration in my every-day speech. I never even realized that I was doing it until I started to pay attention to the way that I talked. I think that I do it to emphasize a point, but at the same time it sounds kind of sloppy. When exaggerating, I overstate the truth. I almost think of the truth as not enough. I need to start seeing reality for what it is. Instead of trying to greaten truth, I need to let it be the truth.
During this experiment, I often held back lies that I was about to say. I need to start being conscious of my speech more often. I need to communicate as accurately as possible to express truth as i perceive it.