Note to Self,
You don't need to be militant. You don't need to be brutal. Ever. You can't be brutally courageous, brutally loving or brutally empathetic. You never hear someone say, "I'm just going to be brutally humble with you right now and say that I really suck. Like, I'm a really crappy person." The point is that virtue doesn't belong with brutality. So, when you start a sentence with "brutally honest," what you're really saying is, "I'm going to be honest in a way that is angry and full of loaded language rather than in a way that respects nuance and paradox and uses a great sense of empathy." See, honesty requires multiple viewpoints. It requires truth and truth requires paradox. Even "strong words" must be spoken with a sense of reticence and a recognition that semantics matter. So, don't be brutally honest. Be lovingly honest. Be humbly honest. Be vulnerable in your honest. But don't, under any circumstance use honesty as a means of brutality.
Love,
John
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