Life hurts. A lot. Things that are real, but we hate saying.

I’m a big believer in gentle directness, however. I’m not one of those “I have no filter” people who mask their dickishness by claiming straight talk. There’s plenty of ways to speak the truth without being an asshole about it, and sometimes, blurting out what you think is the truth doesn’t make you a straight-shooter, but an uninformed dipshit.

In telling the truth, one must always seek perspective. Never reject anything out of hand without examination. You might be deathly opposed to the sentiment, but that doesn’t mean we can’t understand the motivations behind it, or the psychological issues that might have led to, say, thinking Donald Trump is anything but a con man piece of shit and wannabe fascist.

If you can figure out why people support him, what it is, at the root, that is pissing them off so much that they’d willingly forgo their own brains and join in a cause whose path only leads to destruction, oppression and poverty for the masses, you can then address that and break them out of that self-imposed imbecility.

And if that doesn’t work, at least we can understand the root causes behind it so we can stop it from happening to others, and give the future an opportunity.

Not having a filter isn’t necessarily something to be proud of; being a truthsayer is, but only if it’s done with the kind of gentle directness needed to let the listener find their way to the truth. That’s the only way things like that really occur; when people see the truth for themselves, and not to have it thrust upon them by someone only pretending to “tell it like it is”.

Target: 1200 words
Written: 1459 words, novella: The Mungk