Have you ever said something, and even as it came out of your mouth you realized, “That wasn’t what I meant?”  Or worse, what if you posted it online?  And can’t take it back?

Yeah…that.

I know I’ve done it so many times that I lost count.  You know how they say “You have two ears and one mouth for a reason?”  Well, that’s true.  But sometimes we don’t even have any prompting.  We just open our mouths and stuff comes out we didn’t intend.

Maybe it’s a bad choice of words.  Or our tone of voice.  Or we just don’t know how to say what we want to say.  Or we’re afraid to say exactly what we mean.  Or something else upset us, and the next thing we say is really more about that than it is about what we’re saying now.

Yes, there are all kinds of reasons for saying not exactly what we meant to say.

This happened to me just last week.  While writing a song.  I had the idea while mowing the lawn.  A phrase popped into my head: “You taught me everything I didn’t want to know.”  So now I’m playing with the idea.  Thinking about what those things were that I didn’t want to know.  I figure this will be the chorus of the song.  The high point.  The main idea.

So I start to write.

You taught me everything I didn’t want to know.  There may not be tomorrow, and sometimes love’s just not enough.  When you’re trapped inside your yesterdays, there’s no future for us now.  I wish you hadn’t blown it; ‘cause now I can’t unknow it.   (something, something, something)….caused me to grow.

I have a melody and everything. I take it to my songwriting coach.

“Are you sure that’s what you want to say?  Is that what you really mean to say?  Do you want this to be a simple break-up song?  Or is there something deeper you can say here?

Ouch.  And yup.  It’s a real case of not saying what I really meant to say.

It’s not like that isn’t true.  Because it is true.  It’s just not the truth, as Andy Andrews likes to say.  The truth goes deeper than what’s merely true.  It provides context.  Deeper meaning behind the facts.  It’s something you can live your life by.  And those words, as true as they were, weren’t the truth.

So now we’re doing the hard work to dig in and mind the deeper truth.  It takes some time, and we end up with a lot of changes.  What was the chorus becomes the first verse.  With a lot of changes.

You taught me everything I didn’t want to know.  There’s no way to hold on to someone who lets you go.  It’s hard when tomorrow takes the wind out of your dreams.  It’s hard when someone isn’t who they seem to be.

There are things I wish I could unknow.  All the pain I went through, at least it helped me grow.

Thank you for loving me, and leaving me, with nothing, and now everything is clear to see.  I don’t live in fantasies; got my feet on the ground.  I’m so much stronger now than you’ll ever be; thank you for loving me.

Now that’s what I really meant.  I just didn’t have the words right away.  It took Drew and me time to talk it through, hash out the emotion, the lessons, and the nuanced feeling that comes with love, loss, and how we grow from it.  All that in one verse and chorus.

What I’m finding is that the first thing I write is usually pretty basic.  Surface emotions.  One-dimensional.  And then we dig to find the gold buried in those words.  It’s always there.  It’s just not what I said in the beginning.  What showed up on the surface.  I have to work to find the gold.

I think this can apply to our conversations, too.  Maybe our first comment is like this.  The first step toward greater depth and intimacy.  The problem comes in when the other person does the same thing.  And then we both react emotionally to those first comments.  And now instead of going deeper, we find ourselves less connected than when we started.  I know I’ve done that.

But since it’s clear I don’t even know my own mind and heart well enough to say what I really mean to say, it’s likely you’re that way too.  As are those who you love.  We struggle to put our deepest emotions into words.  Because they’re felt in the part of the brain that doesn’t have speech.

And yet, we so often hold others accountable for every word they say.  Picking those words apart.  Challenging them almost immediately.  Not giving them the benefit of the doubt.

What if instead we asked questions?  Like, “Is there something deeper here that we can explore?  Is this what you meant to say?”  What if we worked to find the gold in what someone else said to us?  Spent the effort it takes for our hearts to connect with one another?

It would be even better than writing a song.  It would grow our relationships in ways we can’t even imagine.

It took Drew and me 2 hours to write 2 lines of a song.  Because nothing seemed to say exactly what we meant.  Until it finally did.

So maybe – just maybe – we can be a little more patient when people don’t say exactly what they mean either.  Assume that the first thing out of their mouth isn’t what they meant.  It’s just the warm-up.  And it will take some gold-mining on both your parts to get to the truth.  The whole truth.  The golden truth.

Have you had a time when you said something that wasn’t really what you meant?  What happened after?  Leave a comment.