Welcome to this week’s 1-2-1 newsletter. A small pause to reflect, reconnect, and pay attention to what matters.
Inside you’ll find one idea I’m sitting with, two voices I’m learning from, and one question or practice to carry into the week ahead.
I’m excited to announce a change to my weekly publishing format.
Since I was little, I’ve always dreamed of writing fiction.
When I first started this blog, I didn’t have any fiction writing ready to share. More importantly, having never published my writing before, I don’t think I was ready yet either.
After 50+ posts over the past few months, that’s started to change.
Beginning this week, Saturdays will become home to the fiction writing I’ve been quietly working on behind the scenes.
This newsletter has already evolved over the past few weeks, but going forward, the philosophical and reflective life pieces I’d been publishing on Saturdays will now live here instead.
My hope is for this newsletter to become a grounding weekly presence: one idea to reflect on, two voices worth learning from, and one small practice or question to carry into the week ahead.
The fiction, meanwhile, will explore many of those same ideas emotionally through story and character.
As always, thank you for reading. Your thoughts and feedback are always welcome.
Harmony vs Integrity
There’s a difference between harmony and integrity.
I don’t think I understood that for a long time.
For most of my life, I’ve been someone who values peace. I like when people feel comfortable. I like when relationships feel stable. I like when tension stays low and everyone feels okay.
And honestly, there’s good in that.
The world needs kind people.
Patient people.
Flexible people.
But lately, I’ve been realizing something difficult:
The absence of conflict is not always the same thing as peace.
I recently heard an analogy about being on a boat. A big boat with an engine room underneath.
If you never share your honest feelings or needs, then the people in your life are simply standing on deck enjoying the view, unaware of the struggle happening below to keep things running.
Sometimes harmony is genuine.
Sometimes it’s built on care, compromise, and mutual understanding.
But sometimes harmony is maintained because someone is afraid of what honesty might disrupt.
And the problem is that not speaking up in the moment often turns into resentment later.
I think a lot of agreeable people learn to read rooms before they learn to read themselves.
They become skilled at:
smoothing tension
adapting quickly
staying understandable
staying likable
staying safe
And over time, it can become so automatic that they stop noticing how often they abandon their own thoughts, needs, limits, or desires in the process.
Not dramatically.
Quietly.
Then eventually, a difficult question appears:
Where are my wants and needs in the rhythm of my actual life?
And maybe even harder:
What would they be if I finally made space for them?
That’s the thing I’ve been sitting with lately.
Harmony without honesty has a cost.
Not immediately.
Not all at once.
But slowly, over years, a person can become disconnected from themselves while still looking “good” from the outside.
And eventually, resentment starts growing in places where honesty never had a chance to exist.
Back to the boat analogy. Eventually, you have to come up on deck and try to explain what’s happening underneath.
That analogy feels especially real to me because I am absolutely not a mechanic. When something goes wrong with my car or around the house, I often struggle to explain what’s happening in a coherent way.
Emotions can feel like that too.
Difficult to name.
Difficult to explain clearly.
But that’s probably not a reason to stay silent.
I don’t think integrity means becoming harsh or rigid or emotionally reckless.
I don’t think mature relationships are built on brutal honesty without care.
But I also don’t think sustainable relationships can survive when honesty is endlessly delayed in the name of comfort.
Maybe integrity is not the opposite of harmony.
Maybe real harmony can only exist after integrity.
Lately, I’ve been trying to make more space in my life for rest and pace.
The other morning, I noticed myself running downhill to work, right on the edge between barely on time and slightly late.
And I realized I’ve been living like that for almost twelve years.
Now, life is busy. No question.
But I’m also starting to see how much of that busyness has been reinforced by my own unwillingness to disappoint people, create friction, or simply say no.
2 Voices I’m Learning From
1.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” - Carl Jung
A younger version of me would have read this quote mostly as a warning against conformity.
Just because something is normal, culturally accepted, or expected does not necessarily mean it is the right fit for you.
I still think there’s truth in that.
But lately, I’ve started seeing another layer to the quote: becoming yourself will likely create some friction in your relationships too.
Not because honesty is cruel, but because real relationships eventually require clarity.
Clarity about:
needs
limits
hopes
fears
expectations
ways of living
That kind of understanding takes effort. And sometimes disagreement.
But I’m beginning to think that temporary discomfort is often the price of genuine peace.
Not the fragile peace that comes from avoiding tension, but the deeper kind built on mutual understanding instead.
2.
“Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.” - Parker Palmer
I keep imagining a version of this quote that begins, “Good people-ing cannot be reduced to technique.”
There are endless guides on healthy communication, boundaries, values, purpose, mission, and vision. And a lot of them contain genuinely helpful wisdom.
But eventually, I think we all reach a point where we have to stop performing what a healthy person is supposed to sound like and start discovering what honesty actually feels like in our own lives.
Not polished.
Not perfect.
Just real enough to stand on.
That, to me, feels a lot closer to integrity.
1 REFLECTION / ACTION
Where in your life has keeping the peace become more exhausting than telling the truth?
I recently saw a clip of Austin Butler talking about the idea that “embarrassment is an underexplored emotion.”
His message was to give yourself permission to look foolish sometimes. To not take yourself so seriously.
I’d second that and add that personal truth is also an underexplored conversation waiting to be had.
And I think the two are probably connected.
For most of my life, I’ve carried this feeling that if you had something difficult to say, it needed to come out perfectly. If you were going to rock the boat, you needed certainty. Precision. The exact right words.
I’m starting to learn that maybe honesty does not require perfection.
Maybe it’s enough to speak carefully, sincerely, and in good faith.
And maybe the people who truly care about you are not expecting flawless communication anyway.
Maybe they’re willing to walk with you through the messy middle of figuring out what you need, what they need, and the kindest way forward together.
If this resonated, share it with someone who might need it.
Thanks for being here.
Jack
P.S. I’ve been thinking a lot about pressure and freedom lately.
I recently published a short essay called The Freedom Paradox.
It goes deeper into some of what I’ve been working through.
eBook + audiobook here:
https://jackjohnstonwrites.gumroad.com/l/freedom-paradox