BENGALURU: Have you ever found yourself in an argument with a loved one where you are starting to talk about how upset you are, and in a very short time, find both of you getting caught up in ascertaining what were the “exact” facts of the matter? It could be about saying who said what, when and in what tone, what happened and where it happened. Sometimes, the search for facts can get you into loops of memory – you might be saying, “It was Tuesday evening, we were just outside Corner House on 12th Main in Indiranagar,” and your partner might interrupt saying, “That is clearly not correct. Corner House shifted from there months ago!’
The argument then gets side-tracked into which ice cream place, where and what, and nothing productive emerges from the discussion. The fight was in all likelihood about feeling let down or hurt in some way, and wanting to let that come out – nothing to do with where this ice cream place is or was, when it was visited, what was had there.
We see it so often when someone is bereaved – people coming in to offer their respects often ask the bereaved for the facts: when did it happen, how, who was there at that time, which hospital, what had been tried to resuscitate the person and so on and so forth to the point where sometimes the grieving persons get angry and tell them off. Are the facts so important? Could the person offering condolences just focus on being of some comfort, pay their respects and be off?
We get facts and truth quite mixed up. They are really not the same at all. Truth is there is something that needs to be acknowledged and addressed. The attempt is to get some sense of comfort and companionship over that – not cross all the ‘t’s and dot all the ‘I’s. It might be important in a court of law to get the facts all lined up, but in real life relationships, truth is a far more important matter.
I might have had the banana-split or maybe some gelato, and it might have been Milano and not Corner House at all – the facts of it are not as important, as the truth that I was miffed that you took three big spoons out of mine, and when I reached out into your sundae, you turned away and that made me upset. I just want to say that I want fair sharing – that’s all.
To listen to that truth, one needs to be able to actually hold interest in the other’s experience and drop the defensiveness for a little while, to know we might hurt even without intending. If we can do that, we might be able to say, “Hey, Sorry!” and go on to further sundaes without much incident.
The author is a counsellor at InnerSight