The Flinch and the Catch

This morning my coffee is not sitting well on my stomach, and the beautiful flowers around the patio don't have their typical calming effect I really need right now. I'm struggling with how we in agriculture hide from tough issues.

You can't talk about that in public, we shouldn't let them see our dirty laundry.

I've been told something like that several times over the past two years, after an essay I wrote or a podcast I hosted. They were meant as cautionary comments, but they hide something deeper.

The easiest to address is the don't rock the boat sentiment. Well, sometimes we need to rock the boat to wake people up.

The other, more dishonest issue is hiding our faults, faults we don't talk about in polite society. Unfortunately, hiding our problems leads to not solving those problems.

I recently received a message from a respected colleague saying I should be careful talking about controversial topics in public. My first reaction was to consider pulling my post, but after a few moments of thinking, it hit me that hiding from controversy is why we get into these situations.

That is not a comfortable thing to notice about yourself. That your first instinct under a little pressure is the same instinct you have spent essays pushing back on in everybody else. Keep it in the family. Don't let them see. I have caught myself reaching for that instinct more than once this year, and every time, it has felt less like wisdom and more like reflex.

Here is what I keep coming back to. A boat that never rocks is not necessarily a calm boat. Sometimes it is just a boat where everyone on it has quietly agreed not to mention the leak. That agreement can feel like peace, and it will hold right up until the water is over your boots. Silence is not the same thing as solved.

I don't think the answer is to go looking for a fight, or to treat every hard topic like it needs a stage. Plenty of things really are better worked out quietly, one conversation at a time, between people who trust each other. But there is a real difference between choosing your moment on purpose and flinching on reflex and calling it wisdom afterward. This week I caught myself doing the second one.

So here is where I have landed, at least for today. Before I go quiet on something that matters, I am going to ask myself one question. Am I protecting a relationship, or am I protecting a comfortable version of the truth. Those are not the same thing, even though they can feel identical from the inside.

If you have ever gotten a version of that same warning, careful now, don't air that out, I would guess you have asked yourself that same question at least once and maybe talked yourself out of a real answer. Next time it comes up, sit with it a minute longer than usual before you decide. That extra minute is where the honest answer usually shows up.