I can remember many times over the years where I was told that I wear my heart on my sleeve. It has also been told to me that I wear my heart on my sleeve just waiting for somebody to come along and knock it off. I never really did know what this meant, and I tend to think that the person saying it didn’t know either as they couldn’t define it for me. So, I decided to look it up.
I went out to a web site called GoEnglish.com which I found to be an interesting place for looking up phrases. It has definitions and explanations for many commonly used phrases whose meanings sometime elude us. It has things like “absence makes the heart grow fonder” and “he’s out of his element”. Some of these are actually obvious, but some of them or are not quite as obvious and need explanation.
When you say that someone wears the heart on their sleeve, you are saying that this is a person who expresses their emotions openly and freely for anyone to see. This is not a person that hides their emotions like all too many I know that can smile to your face then stab you in the back as soon as you turn around. This is a person who lets you know where you stand, someone who is open and honest with you the entire time you deal with them.
Once seeing the definition I thought about it for awhile and I wondered, is this such a bad thing? I understand that if you meet someone that doesn’t “click” with you, you don’t want to be mean and nasty. At the same time, you might not exactly want to treat them as your best friend, making them think that there is more between you than there truly is. Obviously, we hide our feelings to some extent just to be socially polite. But beyond that, isn’t it more open just to be straightforward and honest with people?
Now to the other part of the saying, I didn’t really find that online anywhere. I’m talking about the part saying the person wears their heart on their sleeve waiting for someone to come along and knock it off. What I think this means is that a person who does this is open and honest in how they treat people, and yet is open and honest about the things they believe in and fully puts themselves into those things.
This makes sense to me. When I used to run security at a science fiction convention many years ago, I put myself into it completely. I involved myself to a point where I had everything planned out, and I had everything prepared so that anyone that worked for me knew what they were doing and what to expect. When I decided I wanted to do massage, I went fully into that, taking classes, doing practices, learning everything I could. When I decided I wanted to get into energy and Reiki, I read a lot, I practiced a lot, I studied with different teachers, and I grew to the level that I am today. So yes, it does hurt if somebody comes along and says that what I do is bad, effectively knocking my heart from my sleeve.
If I join a group, I get involved with it as much as possible because I believe in what I’m doing. If someone tells me that they don’t want me in the group, then I get very disheartened. This actually happened to me early last year. I had been asked to join a group of people who followed an alternative (non-Christian) religion. One of the keys to what they were doing was that they would be teaching. Since I’m always wanting to learn new things and any aspect of spirituality can have bearing on energy and the use of energy and other aspects of life and so forth. So, I joined the group. I was with them for about six months taking part in her activities, sharing their energies, sharing my energies, trying to learn what they taught (which unfortunately wasn’t much), helping where I could, healing where I could.
It was at that time that I was questioned by two of the leaders and told that they felt I was only there to gain more business. Although I will greatly accept any business that comes my way from any source, this was not the case. After answering their questions, I was told that everything was OK. But the next day, I received an e-mail from the same two people that I had questioned me. It said that they weren’t happy with my answers and asked me to leave the group. (Unfortunately, this is an example of people who hide their emotions, hide their attitudes, and then tell you what they really think sometime later in a way that means they don’t have to do so to your face.)
I was obviously upset. You see, I try to approach everything honestly and openly. Now maybe people don’t see that, and think they see something else. When this happens I’m always bothered by the conclusions and curious as to how someone could come up with the conclusion that is different than what I presented. The only thing I can think is that I was dealing with a group of people who weren’t open, and could not understand someone who presented themselves openly and honestly even though that is what they expected of people.
This is actually one of the reasons I’m glad I’m out of the corporate world. I would constantly be talking with people who would accept my answers to my face and tell me everything was all right, and then go complain to my boss behind my back. If I didn’t know answers I would tell them “I don’t know”. My boss never liked me doing that. He’d prefer that I lie so that I wasn’t admitting that I didn’t know the answer. Unfortunately, that’s not me. And frankly, I prefer to be me rather than what somebody else wants me to being if it means lying to people, making them think I’m something that I’m not
So I guess I will continue to wear my heart on my sleeve. I will be open and honest with how I feel about people. I will jump wholeheartedly into things that I want to do and things I feel I should do. But then again, is there a better way to be?