When someone says something unpleasant to another person and then justifies it with “Sometimes the truth hurts!” then I know for a fact that the person who is making the comment is completely uninterested in actually helping the person they claim they are trying to help.
Getting hurt is painful, and we react to pain by withdrawing (flinching, cringing, curling up, crawling away) and putting up defenses. Whether the pain is coming from words or a wasp or a broken arm, our first instincts are to minimize the damage and retreat.
Putting someone in that position, purposefully, for the sake of making a point about their life choices or personality is not only counterproductive but cruel. The people who feel compelled to do so anyway, IMHO, are either trying to make themselves feel superior or are attempting to shut down the other person completely.
I’m not talking about those times when a friend says, “hit me with the truth,” because usually they already have an idea of what you are going to say and are braced for it. Also, no one asks that question of somebody they don’t implicitly trust.
But that person who says out of nowhere, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but…” is not a friend, and sure as hell not helpful. If their defense is “the truth hurts” then they are also jerks.
I’m certainly not saying I haven’t done this in my time; I think we all have. Sometimes we deal with people and just reach our limit, and feel compelled to point out their aggravating behavior no matter the consequences. Let’s not kid ourselves that we are doing that for their own good, though — we’re doing it to shut them up, or to force them to change. In my experience, neither ever happens.
The most important practice Buddhism has taught me, and the hardest, is compassion. Unless you are resetting someone’s dislocated shoulder (or the like), helping should never include hurting.
/random philosophical commentary on human relations
