Radical friendship, p.11
Radical Friendship, page 11
It does seem to help the message land well if we can connect with our intention to be kind. We can even begin by stating our intention out loud: I bring this up because I care about your well-being. Or, Because we have a shared commitment to justice…Or, Because I want us to continue to have an honest relationship…Or, Because I trust you…
When we tell secrets that we fear may land hard with another person, we often brace our muscles, armoring the space in front of our hearts. To tell your truth with kindness, soften the front of your body, if you can. Our anticipatory defensiveness can signal to our listener that they should get defensive too. So, relax your jaw, relax your throat. Among friends, love is your best protection.
If we or someone we care about has been harmed, or if we have been conditioned to keep those truths secret, our phrasing or tone may be a little strong while we’re finding our voice. But, this doesn’t mean that if we can’t say something nicely, we shouldn’t say it at all. Kindness is not just speaking in soft, soothing tones. For those of us who have made a practice of silently metabolizing our suffering, radical friendship often means making some noise.
Is It Unifying?
The Buddha’s teachings on wise speech ask us to refrain from divisive speech. It’s a reminder that, as radical friends, we try to tell our truths in ways that do not intentionally pit people against one another, creating an us-versus-them culture within or between communities. And, this principle of wise speech comes into tension with what we think of as “callout culture”—the practice of publicly exposing someone who has caused harm (usually on social media or some other widely distributable electronic media format). Most often, it’s exposing an interpersonal harm (or pattern of harm) that reveals a person who we thought was woke is actually an agent of structural violence of some kind. Most often, it does have the quality of telling a secret, airing something that has been only privately known into public space. The person who has committed harm is called out into the open, and we, who are now witnesses to that harm, are called to turn our backs on them.
Now, it must be said that one of the characteristics of supremacy culture is an aversion to open conflict. And, within this particular cultural frame, it’s considered divisive to just point out ways how individuals or groups may be perpetuating systemic injustice through their behaviors, policies, and structures. If we come forward to share our experiences of how we’ve been negatively affected, or voice our concerns about how a person or community may affect others, there’s always a risk that people in power will feel personally criticized or threatened. When that happens, the person sharing their experience is often made out to be the cause of that experience.
So, when it comes to telling secrets that involve our experiences of harm, speaking in a unifying way is not so simple as it might at first sound. Faced with the threat of being seen as divisive, being written off as the “angry ____ person” with a chip on their shoulder, we may choose to silence ourselves rather than risk being ostracized by our communities, or worse—not believed by them. I know this has been the case with me.
Many years ago, I was one of a trio of Black women who took the lead on organizing a “meditation occupation” of an intersection in downtown Brooklyn. We met through a larger network of leaders who were brainstorming how to activate spiritual practice and action in service of social justice. When a labor organizer approached the group with a request for support in the Fair Wages movement, the three of us stepped up to make it happen. In the months before the action, we did a series of teach-ins at Buddhist centers, yoga studios, and wellness spaces in New York, asking organizers and worker/activists to join us and tell the story of their campaign for a living wage, the Fight for $15. The three of us worked hard to articulate the bridge between their struggle and our practice, and to offer mindful communities who were committed to generosity and compassion a chance to move boldly into wise action. Our invitation was this: instead of meditating alone at home, come join us for a meditation in the streets, and use your practice to block traffic and raise awareness about the campaign for a living wage.
On the chilly morning of the action, dozens of meditators arrived at our meeting place, the Brooklyn Zen Center, for hot coffee and conversation—the vast majority of them folks that myself and the two other lead organizers had personally connected with and asked to come. Along with them arrived one of the members of that larger network of leaders, a white woman, who had offered to document the event. Her staff handed out branded t-shirts with the name of her nascent organization emblazoned on the front. The camera crew she brought along interviewed her and her staff in the crowd of people—but they never asked to speak to me or the other two Black women who had put so much heart and energy into launching this event.
The meditation occupation was successful: we shut down traffic for several minutes and generated some compelling images of a diverse group of people sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, holding signs that read “Sit for $15.” Later, I learned that the footage the camera crew had shot was being used to frame the action as the launch event for a new organization founded by the woman who showed up after all the groundwork had been done. The people who my partners and I had recruited to attend had been there to support fair wages, not to become colorful poster children for the launch of a glossy new wellness initiative. The whole thing seemed dishonest, and I felt we’d been used.
A few months later, her lead staff person approached me to “partner” with them on another project. I declined. I expressed my hurt and disappointment about the launch video they had produced, which claimed ownership of work they simply hadn’t done. She apologized for the video, but explained that they had spent a lot of money producing it and they would not take it down. She also asked me to keep my feelings about her, and about her organization, to myself. After all, she reasoned, we’re all working toward the same goal, right? No need to create divisions here. And anyway, she reminded me, no one likes a shit talker.
I told her I’d share my experience with whoever I wanted to. But I didn’t. Instead, I quietly witnessed that staff person’s rise to prominence in radical communities I cared deeply about. I looked on in confusion as she forged public partnerships with folks whose integrity I deeply respected. I said nothing when her name came up in conversation, I went out of my way to avoid her in social gatherings, and over time, I began to doubt my experience. Maybe what she did wasn’t so bad? Maybe she had changed?
Eventually, she got called out for what turned out not to be a one-off incident, but a pattern of behavior. It happened years later, and not by me. A former employee, another Black woman, wrote a blog post documenting multiple instances of racist, able-ist, dominating behavior she experienced and witnessed while working for this person. As it turns out, there were many Black women out there with similar stories. As their stories rolled in to the comments section of that original blog post, it became apparent that there had actually been multiple, repeated private call-ins with this leader over the years, resulting in accountability circles, advisory boards, and other attempts to remediate and repair harm. None of this had changed her behavior in any meaningful way. Now, prominent Black women leaders were calling for her resignation from the new organization she had founded. In a matter of days, she issued a public apology and stepped down.
In her book Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, the feminist scholar bell hooks wrote, “When we end our silence, when we speak in a liberated voice, our words connect us with anyone, anywhere who lives in silence.” I’m so grateful to the writer of that callout piece, and to the people who stepped in to share their experiences alongside. We don’t know each other, but I received their words as gestures of radical friendship. I started writing my own comment several times and couldn’t bring myself to press “send.” I imagine many others wanted to step forward and share their stories also, but didn’t, for any number of reasons. The people who did speak up helped me to understand and feel that I wasn’t alone. The shame, self-doubt, and confusion I’d held onto for years after she’d co-opted our work began to lift when they raised their voices.
Why was I so afraid of speaking up all that time? Well, for one thing, I didn’t want to risk being seen by the wider community as petty or divisive. People who I totally respected seemed to want and be helped by the offerings she was putting into the world. Seeing this, I had a hard time assessing whether what happened to me was even worth mentioning. Was what happened just a fluke, an early misstep from which she had since grown and changed? Was I just a hater, jealous of her rising success? I didn’t want to be one of those people who sits on the sidelines, waiting to tear generally good leaders to shreds for the mildest of infractions.
Which brings me to the source of my second hesitation: I didn’t really want to hurt her just because she’d hurt me. I didn’t want to harm her, but I also didn’t want to be in a position to be harmed by her again, and I always did wonder if she was still exploiting women of color behind the scenes. Was it my responsibility to warn others? Was it better to let them find out for themselves? Deeper still was the fear that even if I did share my experience, I wouldn’t be believed.
Thankfully, when it comes to telling secrets that have the potential to build unity and initiate needed change, we have more options than the “call-in” and the “callout.” Radical friendship opens up a third space, where we can confide in a closer circle, with people we trust. We gain confidence and clarity when we speak with folks we know will be there for us regardless if they think we are overreacting, who won’t judge us even if our motives are murky or mixed. Our friends can help us stay close to our desire to make things right and prevent future harm. And they can help us decide whether a call-in, a callout, or something else is needed to achieve our goals. I wish I’d talked to trusted friends about what happened sooner.
In the end, we can’t control how others will receive what we have to say. People may think we’re haters. We may not be believed. We may be blamed. But, we can always source our speech from a place that looks and longs for connection, even as we articulate the divisions that also exist. And we can stay close to the people who believe us, support us, and have our backs while we tell the truth that is ours to tell.
Is It Meaningful?
The last contemplation on wise speech asks us to refrain from what’s classically called “idle speech,” or gossip, which is the act of telling somebody else’s secrets. Most of the time when we share truths that are not our own, we are trying to form a bond with someone while avoiding the risk of actually sharing about ourselves. When our habit is to discuss other people’s missteps or misfortunes, it can be out of genuine concern or need, or it can be a subtle way of making ourselves superior to them. Gossip robs us of the true intimacy that is available in any encounter when we share from our own experience in the present moment.
Of course, idle speech isn’t strictly limited to gossip. It can also be the result of feeling discomfort, or a lack of confidence. There may be an elephant in the room of a friendship we’ve cultivated for years, but rather than acknowledging it, we go on making small talk. We stick to topics that feel safe rather than treading into territory that, while it may be momentarily uncomfortable, could also be life-alteringly profound if we find the will to say what needs to be said.
One of my longest continuous friendships today is with someone who took the chance to tell me she thought I needed help. We’d been friends for about five years at that point, and while I’d long since started my spiritual journey, I was still partying like a rock star. Or, so I thought. Eventually, I learned that I was still partying like an out-of-control teenager, long after many of my oldest friends had cleaned up their acts. After an especially saucy evening, when this particular friend told me she thought I had a drinking problem, I laughed. I didn’t have a problem, I told her. I was awesome. I was hilarious. I was the life of the party!
I never unheard those words, though. I think you have a drinking problem…. They gnawed at me, and the more I looked to my life for evidence that it wasn’t true, the more I recognized it just might be. After an especially embarrassing incident where I’d had one (read: several) too many drinks, I decided it couldn’t hurt to check out an alcoholism recovery program. There was a part of me that still just wanted to prove my friend wrong, but I knew taking a break from drinking for a while couldn’t hurt. What I didn’t know was how much better my life would become when I put down intoxicants for good.
Turns out, she was right.
What was truly wild was how my other friends responded when I shared that I’d quit drinking. “Oh, thank God,” they gasped. I can’t tell you how many people confessed that they too had been concerned, or that they had simply pulled back from our friendship because they were sick of taking care of me or cleaning up my messes when we went out. Why didn’t you tell me? I moaned again and again. It felt like I’d had a piece of broccoli stuck in my teeth for the better part of a decade, and most of my friends just let me walk around grinning like an idiot.
In the end, I knew that my behavior was my own responsibility, and that it’s not my friends’ job to save me from my choices. But I do think that was the difference between the majority of my friendships and this truly radical bestie of mine: she wasn’t willing to let me go out like that without letting me know what she saw, and she did it with love, in a place and time when I could really hear her. For that, I’m eternally grateful.
Engaging in meaningful speech doesn’t mean every word we say has to be deep and profound. Especially when we’re just beginning to make friends with someone, small talk can be hugely meaningful. We can start with hello, ask questions about how they like the weather, where they’re from, what movies they’ve enjoyed lately, and so forth. When we’re remarking on a common experience or joking around, the secret we’re telling isn’t so much in the content of our words. It’s our wish to connect, and we can share that wish not only with our words but also with the shine in our eyes, in small gestures of kindness, and in our willingness to make the first move toward making a new friend.
Sometimes idle speech is a way of avoiding awkward silence. There’s nothing wrong with saying a few words to put ourselves or others at ease, but there’s also nothing wrong with a moment of quiet. Being a human being is awkward a lot of the time. We don’t know what to say, what to do with our hands; half the time, we don’t know what the hell is going on at all. No one ever died of awkwardness as far as I know, but the things we do to cover up the truth of our awkwardness can undermine our intentions to reveal who and how we really are.
Awkwardness is beautiful and genuine when we just accept it for what it is. If we can be there in the human experience of not knowing what comes next, and if we can relax and hang in there together, something always emerges eventually. Something we can’t calculate, can’t force. In moments like these, our practice is to resist the temptation to hide our uncertainty, to resist anxiously filling the space with words that mean less than the silence does. Because if we rush to fill that space with whatever we think belongs there, we might miss whatever the universe had in mind, which is often more precise, brilliant, and real than what we might have expected. The speech that comes through us after that awkward pause, the words that spill out of not knowing what to say—these are the vulnerable, sensitive words that can often share something completely fresh and of the moment. When we wait for what is truly meaningful to come through, we often end up speaking something that needs to be said and can only be said by us, right now. Those words mean the world—and they are worth waiting for.
PRACTICE
Wise Inner and Outer Speech
Training in wise speech begins with paying attention to our thoughts, which are a kind of inner speech. As we settle into meditation, some of our thought-streams will consist of whole conversations with another person, carried out entirely in our minds. Sometimes, these will be do-overs of conversations we’ve already had, where we mentally improve upon what actually happened so that everyone says just the right thing. We’ll also have fantasies of future conversations, the ones we want to have, but haven’t yet.
If a particular conversation comes up once or twice while we’re meditating and it’s fairly easy to drop it and come back to our chosen practice, we should let it go. But, if every time the mind wanders it defaults to rehearsing or rehashing something we’d like to say, it may be a moment of inner speech that needs a bit of attention. Some persistent patterns of internal dialogue need to be explored before they’re ready to fade into the background.
When you suddenly notice that you’re having that same old mental conversation yet again, whether it’s during meditation or while going about your day, one option is to pause and mentally note what is happening right now: inner speech. As with any sensory phenomenon that arises during meditation, becoming aware of what’s happening in the present moment counts as practice. When we’re having conversations in our mind, we lose track of time, we lose sensation in our bodies, and sometimes we feel as if we’re somewhere else. But even while we’re lost in thought, we’re creating patterns of inner speech that eventually often manifest outwardly. But, if we’re aware of inner speech as it arises, we’re less likely to be lost in the virtual reality of our own imagination, and less likely to create patterns of thought and speech that are outside of our intentions.
