Hard and clear

Hemingway has this great line, “Write hard and clear about what hurts.”

As a kid I remember resolving to be just that - hard and clear - as a thinker, as a speaker, as a writer, as a communicator. I resolved to be that way because I noticed how much turmoil being palatable and vague created in the lives of people around me.

I think we’re only as free, as healed, as useful, and as loving as we are “hard and clear” about the things that we carry, the things we inflict, the things we want, the things we need, the things we fear, the things we grieve.

Stop compulsively reaching for silver linings the second things feel ragged and raw.

The late George Carlin would agree, I think. His famous bit about euphemistic language is one of my favorites.

“I don’t like words that hide the truth. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent a soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. Poor people used to live in slums. Now the economically disadvantaged occupy substandard housing in the inner cities. And they're broke! They're broke! They don't have a negative cash-flow position. They're fucking broke! Cause a lot of them were fired. You know, fired: ‘management wanted to curtail redundancies in the human resources area, so many people are no longer viable members of the workforce.’ Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins.”

You see this euphemistic immaturity in the self-care space and (and the church space), too. I’m a people-pleaser (you have a deep-seated control issue and you manipulate situations to avoid rejection). I’m a giver (you’re prone to resentment and have a martyr complex). I wasn’t totally honest (you lied). I’ll pray for you (you will not extend yourself to alleviate anybody else’s suffering).

Now, while moving around in a euphemistic hazmat suit isn’t great, I’m not saying we should be gunning for dysphemism, either. Being honest is not the same as being a cynical, mean old fuck. Sometimes people do seem to get those things confused. There are few things more annoying to me than a cynical asshole who thinks he or she is anointed with a clearer sense of just how dire and useless everything is (I’m looking at you, Cormac McCarthy and Werner Herzog). These types tend to be a touch self-absorbed. Their arrogance (a form of avoidance) makes their consciences sluggish to the point of apathy. They call dark things out accurately, and they may even be creatively prolific, but then fail to be answerable themselves. They’ve effectively abandoned their faculties of hope and imagination, which I believe are two crucial elements in seeing the good in other people, maintaining relationships, and just generally being a tolerable (and tolerant) human being.

Cynical old fucks have their “hard and clear,” moments, though, often at a higher rate than sugary, biblically-sound Midwesterners, and I damn well respect them for it. Ricky Gervais, who I typically am not a huge fan of, killed it in his Golden Globes dialogue back in ‘20. You can feel the visceral discomfort in the room as he skewers the Hollywood elite and says all of the things you’re not supposed to say in polite company. Tom Hanks, Tim Cooke, et al look the other way and nearly burst a few blood vessels in an effort to appear as though they’re not complicit in protecting perverts - possibly even perverts they’ve partied with. What a privilege, to clutch one’s pearls at the mere mention of abuse of power. To comfortably take offense at the mention of a problem you helped create thanks to refusing to look at it.

I don’t care what your personal belief system is, or how it informs your default MO in intrapersonal relationships; but if it’s inuring you to the fact we are responsible for one another, and the fact that you are what you cultivate when nobody is watching, I think it’s a bit of a shit belief system. If it’s preventing you from identifying with another person’s hurt (especially people who are very different from you), if it’s making you fluent in conflict-averse hunky dory gobbledygook, I mean…yuck.

I write all of this and run the risk of sounding like an imperious school marm, I know. I’m just saying, one of the most effective “life-hacks” out there is being hard and clear about what hurts - what hurts you, what hurts others - and finding your role in all of that; interrogating your role in all of that.

We need to address the hurt we carry and the hurt we proliferate if we have any chance of participating in the work of healing - healing in our families, healing in our communities, healing in ourselves, healing in society. And we have to put the hurt to words - sharp, shameful, bleak, angular, knifelike words we might rather not say - and we have to be clear about the ways the hurt has altered us.

The ability to use precise and truthful language is the one of the most potent antidotes to the ambiguity, equivocation, and avoidance that underlie nearly every power struggle, every act of violence, and every intimate rupture.

The flabby (over-spiritualized, over-therapized, over-sanitized) language that purports to keep us safe often enough just keeps us isolated. And that’s fucking lame, man. In the words of Carlin, it makes me want to vomit. Well, maybe not vomit. Makes me want to engage in an involuntary personal protein spill.