Is this not a self-evident truth?
Much to my surprise, it is not!
A subtitle for this piece, therefore, might be –
“Dealing With Realities Colliding: A Tale Of Truthfulness Setting A Person To Soar, Up Against Truth Being A Dangerous Commodity”
Here’s my backstory of how those two themes banged up against one another, leading me to realize, after the fact, that instead of my doing an Anastasia The Storyteller Radio Show on the subject of …
to be followed by --
Friday afternoon, June 28.
There I was, sitting myself down with my new Anastasia The Storyteller Radio Show Studio Manager (I just now made up that official title for New Horizons Board Member, Lynn, as my “new” studio manager) for a program planning meeting, when I came face-to-face with a greater reality than my own, obviously limited view, bringing someone else’s “truth” to my amazed attention.
I was feeling some pressure to get Lynn and I moving on script development as our next radio show broadcast was scheduled for Tuesday, July 2. And, due to a series of wide-ranging chaos-breeding events, I had been unable to broadcast since mid-January.
One of these happenings, a major accident for Lynn, prompted an emergency room visit, leading to immediate surgery, leaving her very limited in her daily activities and in unending pain.
With this as a backdrop, how does a show host, like myself, relying on Lynn as I had been, account to a listening audience for a six months lapse in broadcasting a program intended to be weekly, or bi-weekly, at the least?
As it had turned out, I could not easily do my show without studio assistance, especially as the required internet service for broadcasting is unreliable up here in the mountains where I live and work. And, my former studio host, not so readily replaced, had been fired for being high on marijuana while on the air with me on a show back in December.
Also, freshly on my mind was that the previous day I had completed an Anastasia Super Sleuth’d Coaching and Consulting Evaluation Session with Lynn. It had been a gift that seemed more than appropriate to provide her.
Lynn was, after all, a New Horizons Board Member which naturally entitled her to a 50% discount on sessions with me, plus she had been a former psychotherapy client who had come into treatment with me almost thirty years ago, bringing her partner, who would eventually become her second husband, four kids and a daughter-in-law along!
Recently she had come back to re-connect with New Horizons and myself and had become a board member, along with becoming a dear friend. Then there was my wanting to show appreciation for her willingness to run the show studio, a support without which I could not easily do the show.
Our evaluation session, which was intended to be the first of many coaching and consulting appointments on her behalf, had centered on Lynn and I reviewing her answers to my Compassionate Warrior Quiz.
There were few surprises for me with her answers, fewer still for Lynn who had been attending counseling and other forms of self-help such as parenting classes for decades. And, thus, was quite self-aware.
However, for both us there was one huge surprise!
As we completed the assessment, rounding it off with a discussion on question number twenty-five.
Question number twenty-five asks –
Do you indulge in behaviors or feelings you attempt to hide from friends or colleagues?Answers range from –
Always True – 5 to Never True - 1Knowing Lynn as I do – and for as long as I have, with her having been a devoted Truth or Dare GAME player, as far back as almost thirty years, I was not surprised she gave herself a “1” on this, “never true.”
What did throw me, however, was when, after a brief pause, she said, almost blurting it out, “But with my kids, my answer would be “4,” often true.”
OMG!! What have we here, I hear my mind saying, in retrospect?
“What does this mean for my dear Lynn?
That she is more often than not lying and hiding things from her grown kids?
And what can this mean for her assisting me in doing a radio show program, especially one focused on truth-telling, where she will have off and on dialogue with me, on the air in the service of our listeners?”
Yikes!
I see it now, in hindsight, further surprises lay ahead, a good hand full of challenges and a few disappointments, as Lynn and I, rather innocently, got more and more involved with our program planning. And then made our way, eventually, onto the air.
Hear our show, now on podcast, and listen to how an emerging set of quandaries played out.
Also indulge me here as I acknowledge that I was disappointed enough to spend some of my precious July 4th figuring out how to turn the mishaps that arose to the good.
I'd like you to hear the podcast from yesterday’s program. Even with its blemishes it has some richness to offer.
Then tune into its sister broadcast/podcast –
Part II, How Truth- Telling Sets Us Free:
… where the messages of the last ten minutes or so, of Part I, will be offered a second time in order that what they were intended to convey does not get lost behind the fuzziness, the significance – and – the power of the first twenty minutes of Part I, which, delightfully, now open the gates to what will become a lively discussion on ...
Tuesday, July 23 4 p.m., EDT
With a follow-up series, based on this theme, soon to be scheduled, featuring Lynn and I discussing how we are going to help her, too, to discover “how truth-telling can set us free.”
Wow!! What an adventure life can be when we stay present enough to watch what is truly unfolding before our eyes and, as one of my Watergate heroes, Carl Bernstein suggests, seek –
“The best obtainable version of the truth.”From this platform even seemingly magical things can arise.
For example the fact that Lynn and I now will be embarking on a whole new series of radio show programs, to be broadcast on the New Horizon’s sponsored The Possible Society In Motion Radio Show, on educating people to learn how to move beyond “truth-telling can be dangerous” into experiencing how “truth-telling can set us free.”
Without this shows mishap -- and -- our truth-telling, problem solving ways we might never have discovered that this could be an important next step in supporting New Horizons' Truth Or Dare Movement mission, embodied by the Pro-Truth Pledge.
Coming soon!
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