We wish for the courage to be brutally honest, forgetting to wish for the empathy to know when honesty becomes brutal.
– Jesse Friedman
Jesse Friedman
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We have this concept of the white swallow in Bulgaria. Our local swallows are never white. But in a short story, studied at school, called “By the wire”, a family is driving their horse car along the electrical wire, watching the swallows on it, and trying to find a white one. Someone told them that if they find one, it will bring a miraculous cure to their sick kid.
So, they meet a person and ask if he saw a white swallow. He immediately sees the false hope but despite that, confirms it’s all real, sending the family down the road to keep seeking the cure.
Not sure if a similar story or proverb exists in English.
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Thank you for sharing.
I took a moment with this, because you’ve highlighted something I hadn’t fully considered.
Empathy doesn’t just help us know when honesty becomes brutal; sometimes it tells us when even gentle honesty would be too much. Empathy and integrity working together as guides. Perhaps integrity isn’t always about truth telling, sometimes it’s about recognizing when someone needs their hope more than they need our honesty. The stranger’s choice to confirm the white swallow’s existence might have been the most integral act in that moment, even though it wasn’t truthful.
The story reminds me that wisdom isn’t just knowing how to speak truth kindly, but knowing when kindness means not speaking truth at all.
Thank you for adding this layer to the conversation. It’s a beautiful reminder that empathy sometimes asks us to carry the weight of truth so others don’t have to.
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