Save Your Tact

People say I have no tact.

It’s not that I have none.  It’s that tact is precious to me.

Tact is useful.  It is precious. It is so valuable, it should be used sparingly.

Let me tell you a story.

Many years ago, I knew a very pretty girl.  She was the sort of girl who made people happier just to be around her.  A sort of glow.  She happened to be a junior naval officer at my unit.  She had a boyfriend, who very sensibly asked her to marry him.  She accepted. 

Shortly before the wedding was to take place, she was diagnosed with cancer.  They cut off her right leg in an attempt to save her life. 

I went to visit her about a week after her surgery. I took chocolate and a funny book.  There was a big cage over her stump, protecting it from being bumped. I sat on the bed where her leg used to be, and asked if she was in pain, afraid, etc. 

With me – and I presume, with them – she kept a brave face on, determinedly sloughing off the loss of her beautiful leg, the loss of her groom, the loss of her health, the loss of her career (naval officers need both legs), the loss of so many things. 

She had inspired her visitors with her strength and they came away comforted.  She never received comfort from them.  How could she, when they would not acknowledge that she needed comforting?

I asked permission and when granted, looked at her stump.  I asked practical questions about her hygiene, her ability to get around, what was the hardest thing to do, what was she afraid of.

She told me that her other visitors had told her how well she looked, that she would make a beautiful bride, etc.  Until the groom got cold feet.  Then her visitors talked about how brave she was.  None would look at the great bulge of the cage, nor the empty space below it.  Everywhere else but.  Mostly, they looked away from her. 

I asked if she wanted to get outside -- I'd be happy to push the chair.  I offered to go pound hell out of the (ex-)groom.  I told her she’d now get pedicures at half-price.  I told her about how amputations used to be done in the “age of wooden ships and iron men”. 

After a while, she started laughing, and then began to cry.  I sat with her for a long time while she got it out.  She said the worst thing of all was the oppressive tact of people: none of them would talk about or even look at the whole reason she was there and why they were visiting.  She'd lost her bloody leg.  Maybe she'd die.  She declined my offer to beat up her fiancé.  We went for a spin in her wheelchair.  When I left, she was in a stronger frame of mind, facing her fears and not hiding from them, not hiding them from her tactful friends.

I visited her several more times as she recovered her health, beat the cancer, and moved on in her life.  Last I heard, her fiancé woke up and she forgave him for his cowardice.  They married and have several fine children. 

Tact is not silence.  Tact is understanding the other person's feelings and being respectful of them.  Tact is whispering to a colleague that his fly is open, or that she has boogers hanging from her nose.  Tact is not saying nothing and watching others laugh behind their hands.  Tact is not yelling across a crowded room: "Your fly is open!"  Tact is giving help discreetly, silently, or secretly -- when asked, or when it is needed but not asked for.  Tact is giving the right help -- not "help" that makes the giver feel better, while doing nothing for the receiver.  Tact is empathy, not sympathy.

But tact does not require that we remain silent about nasty people or liars.

At Clear Legal we have been calling a spade a spade since 1990.