By Amy Butler
In a fit of good intention I recently purchased a personal scale — the kind used to measure body weight. Truth is that I have never owned such a thing before. In my estimation, there’s little call for populating your house with nonhuman entities that radiate challenge, intimidation and disdain. The dog does that enough already.
But knowing that most normal people own such an appliance and with New Year’s resolutions quickly fading into oblivion, I thought such a purchase might be a good step toward the ever-elusive goal of personal accountability and also fitting into my jeans.
Once the decision was made, all it took was a couple of mouse clicks on a recent Groupon e-mail, and before I knew it my sleek new personal scale was on its way.
When the package arrived, I wouldn’t say that I was especially excited, but I did open it with some level of anticipation: I was ready to meet head-on the challenge of maintaining a reasonable weight, or at least give the impression of a healthful lifestyle to any who had the occasion to see the scale on my bathroom floor.
I opened the package, took out the scale, installed the batteries and – to my horror — realized that this was a talking scale. That is, when you stand on it to ascertain your body weight, the scale speaks. Loudly.
“ARE YOU READY?” the female voice yells as soon as you step on. Then, after a few seconds, the voice proclaims, “YOUR WEIGHT IS ….”
My response to this discovery was two-fold. First, I examined every part of the appliance and read the enclosed instructions front to back a couple of times to see where the “turn the voice off” switch or at least the “lower the volume” dial might possibly be. Turns out neither exist on this particular model.
Increasingly desperate, I read the packing slip looking for return instructions. “All Sales Final,” it clearly read in large letters across the invoice.
So, in exchange for my good intentions, I now seem to be the owner of a sleek new personal scale that, when used, yells my weight loudly enough for everyone in the house to hear. I know this because the morning after I got it one of my teenagers asked me with a smirk: “Are you ready?”
As such, I am now beginning the slow process of trying to make peace with my truth-telling appliance. I expect this will take some time.
It turns out that life in community is something like a talking bathroom scale. If we do it right, we’ll cultivate relationships with people who will tell us the truth about ourselves, loudly and often enough that we have to pay attention.
If we’re wise, we’ll avoid the impulse to silence the voices of these truth-tellers and instead listen to what they have to say with open hearts. If we’re able to do that, perhaps we’ll see some truths about ourselves that we otherwise might have missed.
Nobody likes to be confronted with hard realities about themselves. Most of us prefer whatever comfortable self image we manufacture with our own limited perspective.
But when we do the hard work of truth telling for each other and receptive listening to those voices in our own lives, there is a possibility for change. Painful as it may be when it happens, the possibilities for growth are endless.
So, what do you think? “Are you ready?” Listen up to those truth-telling voices in your life. You might learn something that could change everything.