021: Do ACTIONS speak LOUDER than words?

If you're familiar with the Socratic Method then you will appreciate this post more than any other. According to Wikipedia, "the Socratic Method is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presumptions". I constantly engage in conversations this way, I have and always will be fascinated with the why. This post will be different than others, I have owned my truth, but I'm going to post the raw unedited dialogue between myself and a friend. Can you follow our logic? Does this help you see the way I think? Better yet, do you agree with our conclusion? 

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Me: Truth is valuable. In order to find it and understand it, you have to look past appearances and formalities. Have you ever considered before making any judgments about someone or a situation, judging their words according to their actions first? Aside from learning more about the way people think, I think it helps better understand yourself and your relationships with people. Follow me on this one, I feel myself going down a  philosopher's rabbit hole. But, come with me! 

Friend: I’m hesitant to put so much weight on actions. I realize you're talking about actions speaking louder than words, but when you said to judge their words according to their actions and that that leads to learning more about the way people think, I found myself wondering if our words reveal how we think while our actions reveal how we feel? 

Me: What about the intentionality of people's actions in converse with their words. We all walk around as if things occur by accident rather than by choice. Regardless if these choices are subconsciously made or not, they are choices rather than happenstance. 

Friend: I also wonder if we walk around as if everything happens by accident and not by choice. When I think about the times people become upset, a huge part of their pain or frustration seems to stem from the fact that they feel as if they couldn’t control it. Perhaps we take for granted the notion that we direct our own lives, although in practice we fail to recognize the role each choice plays in the whole? 

Me: I personally don't believe in coincidences. I don't think things just happen by luck of the draw or a twist of fate. I think our realities are a summation of the choices we've made. Obviously we can't predict outcomes, but we make decisions to help manifest our desired outcome as best we can. 

Friend: You're talking about how we make decisions to shape the desired outcome, my mind immediately went towards the philosophic notion that man will always act towards whatever he perceives as a good. He’ll never, ever do anything he thinks is bad, only things he sees as having some good in that moment. So, for instance, someone who lies does so not because he wants to be a son of a bitch, but because he sees lying as better than facing the truth. That same notion extends to include the fact that we’ll always make the decisions that we think will make us happier or more content—maybe even being more honest if honesty is an ideal we hold. 

Me: The interesting part for me is where a person's words dictate one thing, but their actions allude to something different all together. Where is the line drawn in the sand that stipulates how much of a person's words we adhere too and how much of their actions we account for? How much of our own words don't match our actions or vice versa? 

Friend: Would that not depend on the relationship? Let’s link it back to the types of love: in agape, for instance, you’re going to put a hell of a lot of weight on both because whenever one seems inconsistent you’re always going to want to think the best of that person and you’ll be praying to God that you can rationalize the situation with the other; storge love, on the other hand, is going to be more based on words because you simply don’t care to know the person beyond that. 

Me: It's an interesting cycle isn't it. I countlessly witness the deviations in people's words from their actions, from my words to my actions. Sometimes they equate, but often times, they don't. Can it all really be by accident? I think sometimes our subconscious betrays us and our actions mirror our hearts true desire when our words placate the safety in passively burying our truth. Because you're right, the type of love we share with someone offers limits to how far we SHOULD go. Do you think that our actions are a window into what we think is good, good for us that is? For example... We say we care about people but do little to nurture our relationships. We say we dislike someone but then go out of our way to extend them a kind gesture. We claim that it doesn't matter if we speak to someone ever again but spend hours checking our phones. We attest to someone being close to us, but do little to check on them really. 

Friend: Can we blame saying we care about people and not nurturing the relationship, spending hours checking our phones, and not checking up on people to words betraying actions? I think right now I might be way too hung up on the Greek versions of love and on cultural norms, but I find myself wondering if we say these things because it’s what we’re expected to say colloquially, but we don’t see them through because we don’t have the kind of love necessary towards that person to see it through. You’re probably familiar with this, but I’m thinking of the four kinds of friendship according to Aristotle (http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/ethics/section8.rhtml). 

If you hang with me on the notions of love and friendship, then I think that ties in with your point of our actions mirroring our hearts. 

Me: I find myself persuaded by this idea. The type of love, the Greek understanding of the different types of love, helps us determine how much effort we put forth in our words aligning with our actions. How closely our thought processes resemble our effort to attain the good for ourself through our actions. Essentially dictating how much or how little we pursue our hearts desire. My heart has been breaking a lot lately, so much so that I don't know if it ever recovered from its first crack. I wonder whether it is my own actions that are responsible for this. While not all actions are the result of subconscious illustrations of our hearts being revealed through actions. More often than not, the illustration of words not matching actions is evident. We say things but then our actions reveal something deeper, something different than what we've stated. 

Friend: Regarding heartbreak being able to heal and being the result of your own actions. That’ll depend on if you think love is a choice. Going back to the types of love, I think agape has an element of choice in it because it’s almost a type of a covenant, or a pledge saying "no matter what you will always look out for that person’s best interest". Philia love is less of a choice, but still a choice. For instance, it isn’t as if one day I decided “I’m going to love you" but you earned philia love from me and because of that sacred bond, I wouldn’t dare let you down. Eros, on the other hand, is fleeting and doesn’t contain a choice element because it is strictly your passions. So, loving someone is a result of your actions inasmuch as you decided to love that person (or at least you decided to continue doing so once you realized you were). I don’t think a heart can ever heal in the sense of regaining its former existence. That’s the beauty of love, though. Every single person you love in your life is going to fundamentally shape how you love and who you are. Your heart, for instance, has been shaped to be incredibly strong, loyal as fuck, and seemingly boundless. 

Me: If we agree that the love we share with someone draws the line in the sand for us, then I would understand that the love we share with someone offers us a limit to how far we will go. How closely our words will resemble our actions. How much effort we will exude to prove how much we care in-spite of our words. But then I think, our words also reveal how much we do or don't care too. Saying nothing or a passive aggressive statement communicates as much as saying something "nice" I guess. For example, when we say we don't care if we speak someone again but then check our phones, by voicing that it didn't matter in the first place you are inadvertently communicating how much indeed it did matter. Because in my mind, if it didn't matter, it would have never been brought up?! 

I do wonder if this exemplifies your idea that we say things colloquially, as if society has cultivated an atmosphere which frowns upon "caring that much" so you vocalize how much you don't care in order to placate the stereotype or  the status quo, no THE EXPECTATIONS! Then that leads me back down my rabbit hole, that our actions betray our words because they reveal how much indeed we do care and really point to our fear of acknowledging, accepting, or admitting that. 

Friend: When I was little, I had this 98 year old man for a friend and he used to tell me all about life and love. One day, he said, “Love is not butterflies and roses. Love is a choice. Love is hell. No one can teach you how to love, but someone is going to make you want to love.” Another time, following the death of his daughter he said, “The only thing that can heal a broken heart is finding an even greater love.” I think that’s true. I don’t know why, but I tend to think of our life’s journey in the form of a ladder: our first love is going to be intense but also painful, then we get more cautious and take baby steps up the ladder, but each time we let go of one love, we’re able to rise up to the next level of love, until we ultimately meet that person who makes us want to wake up every morning committed to loving even more.

Me: That may be my favorite part of your argument. It has pretty much convinced me that our actions and words are determined by the nature of a relationship and the type of love that is shared. You offer examples that made my heart GLOW. So basically love is like a ladder, each time you love you build on your understanding of love, your commitment to love, and your expressions of love until one day someone inspires you to wake up everyday and CHOOSE to love them.Insomuch as saying that you will find a person, or a person will find you, and a connection will be shared so deeply and so profoundly you endeavor to make your words and actions align more often than not so that you leave no room for misinterpretation of your love of them, a concept, or a thing (goal). 

Friend: This is all a long winded way of saying that in part, yes, heartbreak is due to your own actions; however, that break is going to lead to something ever more beautiful because you’re capable of giving someone the greatest gift they could ever receive: your love. So it’s a choice worth making. As far as actions affecting other people, of course they do, no one will deny that; however, going off the idea of a journey, this makes me think of a narrative (which you love so much, haha). Every action we take not only writes a line in our own narrative, but it’s also a phrase in the narratives of everyone around us. I wonder if it is a defense mechanism because bearing the true levels of our loves—the roots of our actions—is too vulnerable?

Me: I would have never arrived at or explored this idea without you engaging in this dialogue with me. Now I am interested to see where my mind goes in processing people's actions and words. Damn so do our words not match our actions because we are uncomfortable with our truth? I dare even say fear motivates us to utilize evasive or misleading or coloquial words because of how we may be perceived differently by embracing our truth or hard it may be regardless of society perception?  

Other questions & inquiries---

Other friend 1: If actions define you, do your words define your intentions? What happens is your actions, your actions effect other people, you words form your actions & allude to you intentions maybe? There is a gap between them. The words lead to your actions even if they don't match. Sometimes it's a defense mechanism, rhyme and reason kind of deal? Because your actions are rooted in your words even if they don't match. You can find a match in their words and actions if you look hard enough. Kind of like the notion that if something didn't matter it wouldn't be on our minds and we wouldn't feel the need to say anything? 

Other friend 2: I wonder if this relates to your other post when you were talking about how hard it is for us to know ourselves--so much of our actions betraying our words, given your examples and your own words in this post, seem to stem from when our heart is aching and our mind says "no. You can't show weakness."