Thinking before speaking

Actually, thinking before telling would be a more accurate name for this post. I am one of those people who, for most of my life, couldn't keep a secret. If I was told something in confidence, I would have every intention of keeping it to myself, but at the first chance I got, even before I realized intellectually what I was doing, I was spilling the beans.

I can't explain what motivated me exactly, but knowing a secret about someone felt like a weight I carried around with me, until I unburdened myself by sharing it with someone. I guess this is how secrets always get out of hand, but it certainly made some people very mad at me over the years.

Once at my job in Boulder, my boss told me he was getting ready to fire someone in the office. Since I was friends with that person, I didn't want him to be blindsided by this, so I told him. He didn't believe me, he was so naive and trusting. I assured him it was true, that I had heard it from the boss himself, so they had a confrontation. I was aware of it and knew I was also going to be in trouble. And boy, was I! Although I wasn't fired, I was given every chance to quit, but I didn't. The boss didn't talk to me for months and would walk out of the room when I entered. Fortunately I had skills that were valued enough to help me get through those difficult months, and when it was time for my next evaluation, the boss explained that he would put the incident into the file, I would receive no raise for the next year, and that it would be put behind us at that point.

This was just one of the times I recall that my inability to keep things to myself got me into trouble. And then, at fifty, the man who I call Smart Guy came into my life. He is a very private individual, I am a very public person, and in the ancient pattern of people marrying their opposites, we somehow got together. It did help that we were both avid skydivers, born in the same year, and had many characteristics in common: love of the outdoors, backpacking, meditation, and vegetarianism.

One of the first things that ignited unpleasant sparks in our relationship was me talking about us to my girlfriends. When something that he considered private between us was brought up in a social setting, I learned to see the signs, him withdrawing and getting quiet, and I knew we would be dealing with it later. We managed to get through those first turbulent years with the help of a therapist. Looking back, it seems almost beyond belief that we made it through, but something kept us both trying. He said we didn't actually meet, we collided.

Nowadays, I still hear the conversation my earlier self would have had, but I have learned to think before I speak. It's almost like I have two dialogs going on: the one that actually comes out of my mouth, and the one that comes into my mind and would have, in the old days, have spilled out without me thinking twice about it. Regret would only come later, not while I was having the conversation.

I'm sure that part of what motivated me was the thrill of having information that the other person didn't have, and being the bearer of juicy details about a mutual acquaintance. I was, pure and simple, a gossip. Someone who loved having information about another and telling. When I think about it now, I realize I got a frisson of excitement from doing it. It really makes me feel a little ashamed to admit it now.

It's so much easier to live with my imperfections when they are not sticking out of me quite so blatantly. It is very easy for me to see how my younger self would never have admitted the guilty pleasure I derived from gossip. I would have denied it, even to myself. Today I can look at that younger self, though, with a less judgmental eye, knowing that life would mete out plenty of possibilities to grow in self knowledge.

It also allows me to be more forgiving of the folly of youth, those I see in daily life making mistakes of indiscretion. I guess it's true, that old staying about growing older and wiser.