Faking It Until It's Real

I had this conversation with one of my clients earlier this week.  I had invited him for a group walk and coffee outing.  She  asked me, what if she didn't find anyone interesting.  I told him to fake it and to keep faking it till it's real.  I used to believe in being real about everything.  I thought that politeness and good manners were a lot of bourgeois nonsense so I dedicated some of the wasted years of my youth to being intentionally rude to the point of being an offensive jerk.  This didn't gain me a lot of friends and for a long time I went around dejected and lonely, like the guy who kills both his parents and then cries because he's an orphan.

I don't know when things really began to change for me.  I think that one morning in my forties I simply woke up and realised that I was going to start dedicating myself to being nicer to others.  Even if it killed me.  This also meant of course having to fake it until it's real.  This hasn't been easy.

When I began working in the mental health profession I was up against some real challenges, among others, the fact that I was going to have to work one to one in a healing therapeutic capacity with individuals whom I wasn't necessarily going to like.  It was a real struggle for a while.  My tongue almost contracted gangrene and fell out of my mouth for all the times I had to bite it.  Then, to my horror, my clients began to like me.  I soon began to seek daily to find something special to like in each client whom I had difficulty liking.  It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.  Then I really began to see the wounded and beautiful core of my clients, especially one who had been testing my patience and then I saw something so beautiful and so hurt in her that I was overwhelmed with a most tender love for this person.  That was the turning point.

It still isn't always easy.  But it happens now regularly.  I look for what is real and beautiful in each person I work with.  I still have to fake it at first but it soon becomes real.  I am doing this with others now, outside of work, believing as I do that there is something beautiful and of worth in everyone.

I am no longer brutally honest.  It is not real truth but something that hurts and damages people.  When I am doing art therapy with some of my clients, no matter what I might think of their art work it is always wonderful and interesting.  Not because it is well-done, and often by empirical artistic standards it is not.  But it is still the honest expression of this person and this infuses it with beauty and meaning.  And you know something, Gentle Reader?  This approach, rather than being dishonest or hypocritical, has opened my eyes to the beautiful and the authentic in the art of my clients, regardless of their talent or skill development level. 

Truth, when guided by love, can be like a deftly applied scalpel for healing the broken heart.  Otherwise it is a brutally wielded butcher knife that simply kills and mutilates.  Truth has its place and a very important place, but it's rightful place is the place of healing, and love alone can accomplish this.

We are all so very fragile.  This is what makes kindness so important.