Clear, direct, and yet not an ass: how do we do that?

Not a complaint. A real question, from someone who spent years on one side of a line and is now walking toward the other side on purpose, watching their own feet.

If you have ever replayed one sentence for an hour, or wished afterward that you had, this is for you.

One line, or two dials?

The picture in the post is a single line with an error at each end. Too much considering at one end, too little at the other. Moving away from one means moving toward the other. Inside that picture, the honest conclusion is the one the post reaches: there isn’t an obvious line, and it comes down to preference.

But the two errors are not made of quite the same stuff. Analysis paralysis is mostly about whether the truth gets said at all. Being an ass is mostly about how hard it lands. One is a question of content. The other is a question of force.

Those can move independently. A person can say very little and still say it harshly. A person can say everything, plainly and without agonizing, and still leave the other person intact. Seen as two dials instead of one line, the goal in the post (clear, direct, no wasted agonizing, not an ass) stops being a narrow ridge to balance on. Clear and direct is one dial turned up. Not an ass is the other dial turned down. They were never pulling against each other. They were only sharing one line.

Why the agonizing felt like care

Years of considering everything before speaking usually come from somewhere good. The care was real. What it often protected, though, was the moment more than the person: no friction, no visible mistake. The cost is the one the post names, “not say much at all,” and silence has its own impact on people, only a quieter one.

So the swing toward directness makes sense. It is a correction, recovering the first dial. And the worry about becoming “an inconsiderate ass” is the second dial asking to be noticed. Neither worry is a sign of failing. Both are signs of someone paying attention to two real things at the same time.

“Inching closer and closer” is also an honest description of how this tends to go. Nobody finds a fine line by thinking about it from far away. The post itself is the calibration already happening, out loud.

It asked for tips. This page doesn’t have a list. Only the distinction, and the company of someone who has walked the same ground.

From the book

Setting aside people who are actually evil, I estimate that about 99% of problems in relationships are caused because people don’t speak truth. Now, I’m not asserting to speak truth under the guise that some people use to excuse being assholes. Direct truth, absent kindness, kills others’ emotions and can be abusive. That’s exactly what I’m not talking about. It took me many years to really care about how people feel on a deeper level and to gain skills in diplomacy and tact. It took me until my 40s to really get a handle on using tact while speaking truth, and frankly, it took miracles of God to move me into a place where I became willing to use my words with sensitivity. Some people err in that they tend to interact indirectly, and although I had struggles with that, part of what I struggled with was speaking truth in kindness.

In context: this is from the first chapter, “Speak Truth.” The book names both errors from the post, in its own words: being an ass on one side (“Direct truth, absent kindness”), interacting indirectly on the other. And it names someone who had a version of both at once. The paragraph doesn’t pretend the line was found quickly. “It took me until my 40s.” That isn’t offered as a deadline. It is offered as company.

Going deeper

Levi put the same thread in two sentences on Nostr on September 19, 2026:

Kindness isn’t hiding truth.

Kindness is speaking truth with minimum necessary force, so the other person can make a choice based on what’s real.

That quietly reframes both errors in the post. Holding the truth back to keep things smooth looks kind, and isn’t quite. Saying it with more force than the moment needs looks honest, and isn’t quite either. What remains is close to what the post was reaching for: the truth, at the weight the moment can carry, so the other person gets to choose from what’s real.

“Minimum necessary” also answers the preference question in its own way. The right amount of force isn’t fixed. It depends on who is in front of you. That is why no one line ever felt obvious: there was never just one.

Clear and kind were never the two ends of the same line.