Speaking Our Truth—What I Learned After a Ride-Share Fail

I recently wrote a post that touched a nerve, about a ride-sharing trip with my kids for which I didn’t get the best driver. During the ride, I asked the driver to turn down the music, which was so loud we couldn’t talk.  He begrudgingly turned the volume down from ear-splitting to ear-bruising. Not much help to our conversation, so I waited, mentally weighing if I had the courage to ask him again. And then I did, and I received a rear-view mirror response that clearly said he already had a problem with me.

On we drove, sadly into more problems. The driver began aggressively tailgating in the fast lane. Safety always comes first, but my new request sat in my chest for a few minutes, stuck. “He is already pissed about the music, and he is definitely going to give me a poor rating,” I thought. I normally couldn’t care less about such things, but I’m aware that I depend on ride services for many business needs, and a poor rating changes the speed at which you get rides and which drivers accept them.

I gently said, “I’m a bit of a nervous passenger. Can you give a bit more room between you and the next car, please?”

While I prayed for the remainder of the ride to be uneventful, it was not. Still on the freeway, the driver decided he needed earbuds and began multitasking by rifling through his console to find them. I needed to address him again. Each time was harder and more uncomfortable than the last.

We sat there in that awful, trapped silence while feeling the driver’s anger and hearing the boys stage-whisper to me, “Good job, Mom.” I’m still tingling from how hard these simple boundaries were to set with another person.

I shared this ride-share story without much thought and concluded with a few words about communication and bravery.

Then an interesting thing happened. Thirty-five comments followed, containing a theme that surprised me. Many commenters assumed that the reason I felt timid was that he was a man and I am a woman. Folks shared that my worry about seeming too forceful would have been viewed as assertive by a male speaker. And at the risk of revealing that I may be blind to the work of the feminists who paved my way, I will say that this never occurred to me.

One reason I felt stuck in this situation was that if you’re a person who cares about connection like I do, it’s always hard to break a connection in favor of your own needs. I also, like many, enjoy the universally lovely feeling of being liked by a stranger.

But I had the feeling there was something more to learn from my reaction to this driver. I wanted to sit with the experience a bit longer—to take a minute to think—about the commenters’ gender assumptions after the post and to if see they fit for me.

In that pause, I came to understand that my reaction of hesitancy was determined by issues around status, not gender. As a woman business owner who frequently works with men (those I’ve hired, partnered with, and been hired by), and as the proud mother of three boys, my sense of gender-related status is solid. I have no trouble standing up for myself in a group of men or in mixed-gender situations.

As I thought more, I realized another element of status that factors into my confidence is “coolness.” I have been many things in my life—smart, lucky, competent, insightful—but cool has never been one of them. Even as a middle-aged person, I can become unglued and feel my perceived status slipping around super cool people (and we often work with media companies, so I meet a lot of them). But that was not the case with this driver.

So, what was it? Ironically, I was pondering this point while I sat in the chair of a new hairstylist cutting my hair—and I did not love how the haircut was going. In real-time, I was forced to confront why it was so hard to say to the stylist, “Stop, I’m not loving this.”

Then it hit me. Above and beyond all the other reasons, standing up for myself can disrupt my feeling of status by making me view myself as a “demanding person.” This role is one I work hard to avoid; it is a trait I’ve fought in my personality. When it appears, I view it harshly and with an unfair magnifying glass. Avoiding that shadow trait is why my status shrinks and I do not stand up. Because I do not want to be “her”—that lady who needs so much or wants things just so.

Every one of us will have a different reason that we shut down around confrontation, but this is one of mine. The story of this simple insight, discovered at the end of a weaving trail of free-thinking, is why taking a minute to think is so amazing and valuable and never stops impressing me with its power. When we think, we can go deeper and deeper through the layers of our ideas and beliefs, revealing richer truths at every level.

I am still working on understanding the layered reasons why I may not speak my truth. What is your minute to think helping you un-layer?