Today I want to write a real quick one on something that has been marinating in the nether regions of my brain for a while now and absolutely fascinates me. Apologies if it’s too abstract!
Keeping It Real Is Synonymous With the Worst of Us
Whenever we discuss this idea of keeping it real, or being real or even the ideas of opening up and being vulnerable, nine times out of ten we are talking about discussing honestly the darker side of our nature.
I think this is as a result of fear. We are scared of revealing things that we think others may not want to see because we fear rejection. We also fear people understanding us deeply because we fear they will manipulate us. Therefore most, if not all of us, hide what we consider to be our ugly sides desperately waiting for moments when we can be comfortable and just reveal what hides on the dark side of our heart and mind.
This exposes itself in two interesting ways:
1) Profanity
In my opinion, the words f*** and s*** are only used in conversation to either provoke a reaction (usually negative) or to bring authenticity and realness to a conversation through stripping away the formality of it and introducing what one would consider ugly words.
I think this is so because at this point the two words are so overused and so meaningless and do not demean or diminish anyone or anything except the English language. With that having been said (I hope this makes sense so far, I am regurgitating directly from thought to page) I encourage you, whenever you want to have a real, meaningful, deep conversation with someone who you know cusses, if you can also cuss up a storm, do so.
I realized just how powerful profanity is in bringing authenticity into the conversation when I attended a seminar by Anthony Robbins. In it he cusses up a storm and also encourages us to speak in profanity when we can. This is because saying that our life is not working is very different from saying my life is s***. In fact, I encourage you to try this. Try speaking to someone who cusses in a very formal manner and then later on try speaking using profanity. All of a sudden the conversation becomes a lot more comfortable when someone knows they can insert ugly words into the conversation because you did it first.
2) Sexual History
I don’t have too much to say about this, but I will say, when someone is willing to share with you the elements of their sexual history they are not particularly proud of, they trust you and you should respect that trust, because discussing sexual history is an extremely sensitive area for most of us.
If a man is willing to tell you how he was sodomized as a child, they trust you. If a woman is willing to tell you how many men she slept with, including the ones she isn’t proud of, she trusts you.
I sincerely hope this post has made sense to you. It came to me as I was jogging in the nearby park and it’s an idea that I have not fully synthesized into a concrete simple idea. If you have anything to add or expand or you simply have a simpler way of saying what I am saying, leave a comment below or contact me.
Now get blessed and bless everyone,you dig?!
Mwangi
Tags: keeping it real, profanity
I don’t know about that— many times I think using profanity undermines an argument or expression as it is limiting in vocabulary. I can still raise my voice and show displeasure. Think about children, how do you raise them to express their anger, and such without using profanity? And should we not carry this with us as adults?
I think when it’s all said and done, sadly a lot of us do curse though we shouldn’t. I am actually not talking about using profanity in argument, and there I agree with you a lot of the time it stops us from getting to the specific root of the problem by limiting the vocabulary we use to express it. Instead I am talking about how a situation that is formal or professional or impersonal can all of a sudden take a much more personal and much more human form when someone knows that they can use ‘bad words’ in front of us. As I said, I am still trying to wrap my head around what exactly it is I am trying to say. I feel that what I am saying so far makes sense. Hope it makes sense to you.
[…] 100% honest with another human being. Not only showing them our best side, but our most hideous, disgusting side so that they can also feel comfortable to be themselves around us and are never in fear of […]