Entry № 29 · Plate xxix
On DiscernmentPeople may not tell you how they feel — their actions will.
Believe the pattern, not the promise.
The explanation
Words are cheap to produce and easy to mean in the moment. Actions cost something — time, attention, follow-through — and so they reveal what is actually being prioritized. When someone's words and actions disagree for long enough, stop arguing with the words. The actions are the truth; the words are the wallpaper.
The story
I had a colleague — call him Marcus — who was warm, generous with praise, and always, always told me he had my back. In private he would text after difficult meetings: 'you were right in there, I'll say something next time.' In public, the something never came. When my project needed a champion in a budget review, he stayed quiet. When a peer took credit for my work at an all-hands, he congratulated the peer.
Every private conversation reset the meter. He would apologize warmly, explain contextually, promise convincingly. For almost a year I kept believing the words, because the words were what I wanted to be true. Around month eleven a friend outside of work listened to me recount another of these episodes and asked, gently: 'How many data points do you need?
' Something clicked. The next morning I stopped bringing anything sensitive to Marcus. I stopped expecting his defense. I stopped feeling wounded when it didn't come. Interestingly, our friendship survived — smaller, more honest, less freighted. I think we were both relieved. I still like him. I no longer trust him with anything that costs him something to defend.
He never became a villain in my story. He simply became, at long last, an accurate character. The pattern had been telling me who he was for a year. I had just finally listened.