Learning to Speak… Again

It’s well known that between the ages of approximately one and five, the offspring of Homo sapiens slowly and at times lopsidedly do something called ‘learn to speak’. They acquire some key words – lunch, cat, mummy, fart – assemble some basic grammar and are, by the time they are the size of a chair, well on the way to one of the key markers of human competence.

Except for one thing; shortly after they learn to speak, children also learn – as it were – not to speak. At first, they aren’t very good at not speaking, which is why – for a precious time – they’re very funny indeed, as well as occasionally rather excruciating. They use their newfound linguistic skill to come out with utterances like ‘Granny smells’, ‘Jane looks a bit like a giraffe’ and ‘Can you put a poo back in your bottom once it’s come out?’

Then, sure enough, to the mixed relief of the adults around them, children learn not to speak. They become careful custodians of their more charged insights. Out go the large questions, rude observations and naked confessions. By eight they know how to say, ‘I’m very well thank you, how are you?’ By eleven they might tell you, ‘I don’t mind that my parents are getting divorced, I get to go to Disneyland.’ And by seventeen, pretty much all of the wonder and pain of being alive has ceased to make it out of their lips.

When We Learn Not to Speak

Something evidently goes astray. So much so that we might posit that becoming a true adult might rely on going in the opposite direction; on a process of remembering how to speak once again, in emotional rather than grammatical terms. We accede to genuine maturity when we can dare once again to take people into the phenomenal mystery and agony of being ourselves, with all the fear, joy, questions and doubts implied.

It can take a while to realise just how much we’re not saying. Silence on the key areas becomes our second nature. It isn’t just that we’re deceiving others. We have lost the thread even within ourselves, omitting so much that we fail to notice all the anger, terror or joy coursing through us at subterranean levels.

Imagine – therefore – a somewhat bold experiment, in its way as challenging and rewarding as taking up a new sport or mastering a new recipe. Imagine if we attempted to undo three or five decades of experience to travel back to the raw state we knew in our original home. We would – of course – have to take some precautions, but it’s part of the incoherence of adult social life to picture ourselves unable to do so. We don’t, in reality, face such a stark choice between emotional honesty and ostracism. There are well-worn ways of being at once true and kind, honest and unfrightening. We can wrap our moments of candour in levity and good sense.

Imagine if we said, for example, ‘Forgive me, but much as I want to be kind here, there’s something I might be a bit furious about, which is obviously crazy but bear with me…’

Or, ‘It’s not that I don’t like you. I’m scared that you’re going to reject me, which probably explains why I’ve been behaving like a weirdo these past days.’

Or, ‘I’m not just gazing out of the window; I’m actually worrying that you’re going to find me bad in bed.’

Or, ‘I’m not really grumpy; I’m actually going out of my mind with anxiety.’

We’ve picked up the message that such truths are extremely dangerous to share. No one could get a view of our actual levels of pain, worry and desire, and still be on our side. But that’s to forget a bedrock fact: that we are all, beneath a layer of social subterfuge, longing for reassurance that there are echoes of our intimate bewildering experiences in the minds of others. We are all mad, sick with worry, entirely lost and desperately anxious about our appearance, achievements and likeability.

We become more charming when we speak up because so much of what makes us unpleasant is related, in the end, to our unwitting deceitfulness. Not only don’t we want to have lunch, we see no option but to pretend that we would like to. Not only do we leave relationships, we can’t bear to own up to our wish to do so and therefore come across as sentimental and confusing.

Recovering Emotional Honesty

How much better if we had the confidence that we, like small children – except more so because we have greater self-control and tact – are at our most beguiling when we can stick as close as possible to how things actually are.

When we can say, ‘This is lovely, but I don’t want to take it further, I’m so sorry.’ Or, ‘I’m really furious, there’s a part of me that wants to scream and sob on the floor.’ Or, ‘I make no assumptions at all but I really do find you attractive, I hope it’s OK to tell you.’ Or, ‘I’m so worried that I have failed in your eyes, I do apologise.’

We’ll learn to properly live when we stop being morbidly embarrassed by our reality. No one asked us to be alive, no one asked us to suffer as we do; we’re not responsible for how peculiar it is to be ourselves. What is in our power is to be unfrightened by the contents of our minds and to use our artfulness and intelligence to share as much of it as possible with those we come across. Practising a little more emotional honesty in this way reassures others that their own confusions are normal. We will, in the process, reassure them of their normality, deepen our friendships and feel less ashamed of our natures.  We’ll get a little closer to experiencing life as it actually is.