iExamen 2 - Anaya Adams

 Friday October 16th, 2020


I chose this day to conduct the exercise of only speaking things that are kind, useful, and true. Since October 16th was fall break we did not have any classes this day and my friends and I planned a trip to Frederick, Maryland to visit a fall farm. It was really good to get out of the house and do something fun after a stressful week of midterms. I chose this day to do this because I though it would be more of an interesting challenge if I were around my friends from loyola who had also just finished up midterms rather than try when I’m at home with just my parents. The first thing I realized when trying to only say things that are kind, useful, and true is that not everything that is true is kind. I had to be  careful about what I said and this involved a lot of critical thinking on my part to alter my words. It was going well in the morning with my parents, I think part of the reason was because in the morning it’s just easy to be upbeat and kind. I also believe that this task is levels of difficulty range between who you usually are around and the locations. It was easier when I was at home with my parents than when I was alone with my friends.  This makes me think of the differences in the way I communicate with different people in my life.


The challenge came when I arrived at my friends apartment to eat breakfast before we went to the farm. When I arrived we began talking about the Loyola study abroad program. As juniors my friends and I were supposed to be going abroad. I believed that we would not be going but my friend was so positive that there would be a chance for us to go abroad despite the rising COVID- 19 numbers and the fact that many countries are not letting Americans into their countries because of our high numbers. While all of this is true I decided that it would not be kind or useful to my friend to tell her all of this when she had such strong beliefs that we would be able to go abroad. Instead I told her that I hoped she was right and that no matter what loyola would make the best decision to keep us safe and that it might be possible to go abroad which was all true, kind, and useful for my friend to hear. My friends and family also reacted differently to this task. My parents barely noticed but my friends immediately questioned my behavior. When I explained what I was doing they tried to playfully ask me questions that one might typically lie about or may say something harsh because of to see if I could respond in a clever way that would answer their questions while also being kind, useful, and true. It was actually very fun and thought provoking. 


Going into this I thought that this would not be hard at all. However, when in the process I realized that while it is not particularly hard for me to do all three separately, it was difficult to make sure that every statement, text, and post was all kind, true, and equally useful to myself and others. I learned throught the day that my communication is usually true but not always useful. My friends and I always say kind things to each other but for example as the day progressed and we began to talk about the upcoming election and processes of voting I did not have too many kind things to say so I had to limit myself. I always believed that I only ever had kind things to say about people but this exercise made me reevaluate who those people are. I understand that we say kind thinks about the people we know and care about but if there is someone we do not know we feel less required to limit our speech to only kind words. I learned that it is difficult to constantly speak things that are all kind, useful, and true. While it may be easy for most to relay true information in conversation, when talking about things we don’t like we may slip into unkind speech or say opinion that are not useful to the conversation. This assignment was very eye opening to the way we communicate with the people in our lives.

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