There are some things that people are dying to talk about but won’t, simply because the person concerned doesn’t want to talk about it, and no one wants to bring it up either.
So there you are: everyone’s walking on eggshells. Everyone’s tiptoeing around “the thing,” but no one has the guts nor the wherewithal to bring it up.
Why do you think people refuse to address the elephant in the room — even if everyone’s so antsy about it?!! Maybe we’re too proud, too scared, too embarrassed, too upset, too polite, etc. to do it?
Let me share two of my nerve-wracking experiences about having elephants in the room…
There was this lady whose single daughter got pregnant. The news went through the rumor mills for weeks. It sent mini-shock waves all over town, especially since the girl’s parents were prominent and super conservative.
The thing was, we ladies had a lunch date, and the mother of the pregnant girl was part of this group. It was a pretty tight bunch. I was the newest.
Everyone arrived early. The ladies were either stress-eating or not eating at all. Quite abnormal. Well, that day, everyone was just acting weird.
So there we all were — waiting for the girl’s mother to address the elephant in the room. Instead, she completely ignored that elephant. She went on and on and on about peripheral things. We were all waiting. Hoping that at least she’d briefly address it or ask if we already knew — we obviously did. Unfortunately, she did no such thing.
I don’t think the ladies wanted to grill her, or put her in a spot, or squeeze out details about her daughter’s pregnancy. No, it wasn’t like that at all. I think the only thing these ladies wanted from her was to be real and honest. They were, after all, supposed to be close friends. They didn’t want any juicy tidbits. They just wanted authenticity.
Well, they didn’t get it. Not that afternoon. Not ever. And that group disbanded after some months. Some of the ladies told me much later that they felt there was “no real friendship there,” so the group just kind of sputtered and died. Those ladies formed a new group soon after– but no longer with that lady.
I can’t help but think — if only the mom of that pregnant girl had addressed the elephant in the room! She’d probably have those ladies as friends for life, and would’ve forged deeper bonds with them.
At another time and place altogether, I was having dinner with some friends. Just one of those “I miss you” dinners.
However, this dinner was going to be different: one of us happened to have a really, really horrific problem. Our friend’s wife had just left him for another man — a hunk with more money than him.
Honestly, I don’t know which hurt more: 1) his wife’s lover being a hunk; or 2) his wife’s lover being richer than him. You see, our friend was Mr. Moneybags himself. And his wife was not at all your garden variety gold digger. She was, if I may say so, a woman with a lot of Einstein demurely hidden in her quiet, elegant frame. In short, she was smart and classy. But sadly, her husband had forgotten all about her for years. He became, well…too busy. And as it turned out, someone who was NOT too busy took an avid interest in his wife! It was really, really sad. She was gone for good. Just like that.
Well, thank goodness, even before we got to the main course, our friend dove right into it — he addressed the elephant in the room! He went straight to the point, talked about how his wife of 12 years, how the love of his life since he was 20, left him cold.
There were no warnings, no suspicious absences or tell-tale excuses — so he didn’t have time to plead, roll on the carpet and beg for mercy, for another chance. He wasn’t melodramatic, but he was as heartbroken as “emotionally in distress” goes.
For a classic Alpha male, he did pretty well: distraught and despairing, but definitely with his dignity intact. More importantly, he was NO coward: he addressed the elephant in the room — to our collective relief!
All of us left that dinner with just a little more respect, and a little more admiration for our heartbroken friend. He was The Real Thing.
He was brave enough to be honest. He was candid enough to be funny, even in the midst of his woes. And he was humble enough to talk about his faults, his contribution to the problem.
We love him to pieces.
So. What are some elephants in the room that many of us refuse to address? A broken marriage, perhaps. A philandering spouse. A daughter getting pregnant out of wedlock. A son who was kicked out of school. Losing one’s job in a bad way. Going bankrupt. Being accused of corruption. Having someone in your family commit suicide. Or sent to jail. Or accused of rape. Being part of a scam. Being victimized by a scam. Being seriously ill. Like having terminal cancer.
It was the late, illustrious professor Randy Pausch, author of the bestselling book, “The Last Lecture,” who valiantly addressed the elephant in the room when he gave his farewell talk to the faculty and students of the world-renowned Carnegie Mellon University.
Pausch’s book is one of the best I’ve read in my life.
When it was just hot off the press, I was in Barnes and Noble with a dear friend, and she got me a copy.
Here’s one of the unforgettable lines in Pausch’s book: “In case there’s anybody who wandered in and doesn’t know the back story, my dad always taught me that when there’s an elephant in the room, introduce it. If you look at my CT scans, there are approximately ten tumors in my liver, and the doctors told me I have three to six months of good health left. That was a month ago, so you can do the math.”
And this is what Randy Pausch said about his last lecture: “These lectures are routinely videotaped. I knew what I was doing that day. Under the ruse of giving an academic lecture, I was trying to put myself in a bottle that would one day wash up on the beach for my children. If I were a painter, I would have painted for them. If I were a musician, I would have composed music. But I am a lecturer. So I lectured. I lectured about the joy of life, and how much I appreciated life, even with so little of my own left. I talked about honesty, integrity, gratitude, and other things I hold dear. And I tried very hard not to be boring.”
And boring, he definitely was NOT, up to the last page of his book. From Randy Pausch, I learned about another crucial dimension of being authentic. Being real.
Just go ahead and introduce the elephant in the room. Be brave. Be humble enough to do it. People will respect you for it.
Whether people deserve your honesty or not, you owe it to yourself, and to those who sincerely care about you.
