The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: truth

  • Assumptions

    “My coworker is a slob. She says she cleans up after herself, but she doesn’t. I can tell. She has no respect for me, or for the job. She has a bad attitude. She can’t be trusted.” Wow. I’d hate to work with someone like that! It must be so frustrating. That can’t be doing…

  • The Dark Shadow Cast by the Golden Rule

    Most societies seem to have some version of the Golden Rule. That only makes sense. It would be hard to live amongst one’s fellow humans without one. I really do try to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. I can’t imagine functioning any other way. The thing I struggle with…

  • Honne and Tatemae

    Recently a dear friend introduced me to the Japanese concepts of honne and tatemae. I had never heard these words before. Without her, I would  probably just have assumed they were the names for a Japanese pop culture couple or something. (They do say that opposites attract.) After reading several articles on the subject and…

  • Justifying Grief

    I’ve written a lot of posts about my late boyfriend, Chuck, about how much I miss him, about coping with my grief, about how I think about him all the time, and also about how complicated our relationship was, due to his Traumatic Brain Injury. Well, the other day, I was contacted by one of…

  • Honesty Takes Less Energy

    Here’s a bit of honesty: I’m an inherently lazy person. I avoid wearing clothes that need ironing. I take great pains to dirty as few dishes as I can. I am an expert at consolidating all my errands into one trip. My energy is limited, so I try to use it wisely. It’s just how…

  • Self-Evident Truths?

    I think “obviously” is one of the most dangerous words in the English language, as is its more formal and old-fashioned counterpart, “self-evident”. When the US Declaration of Independence was written, with its famous, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” slavery was still legal on this continent, and…

  • Another Drawbridge Story

    Recently I wrote a blog entry called How Soon We Forget, about a unique encounter I had with a fisherman on the job, and how I reacted when he passed away. That was a story that has weighed heavily on my mind for years, and it was good to get it out. There have been…

  • Meaning What You Say

    “Let go of him, or I’m going to hit you,” I said to my boyfriend, who was playing a little too roughly with his much younger brother. The kid was choking. My words didn’t seem to sink in. “P, I swear to God, I’ll hit you if you don’t let him go!” Nothing. So I…

  • Outing Your Abuser

    What I’m about to say is probably going to make a lot of people angry or upset, but as a sexual abuse survivor myself, I think I’ve earned the right to form strong opinions on this subject. Believe me, having this particular opinion makes even me uncomfortable. Nevertheless, here it is. I have known many…

  • Fictionalized Worldviews

    I used to work with a woman who was so in love with the idea of being a Southern Belle that she would blanch (Or perhaps I should say Blanche in this instance) at the word “toilet”. She insisted that a lady would only use the word “commode” and then only if forced into that…