Honesty
Walter and I recently recorded an episode of our podcast “Talking with Intention” where we talked about art and poetry. During that episode I said that I thought real art was honest. I still believe that, and It has had me thinking about honesty a lot recently.
I am a firm believer in “honesty is the best policy” and “the truth will set you free.” I decided a few years ago that I was not going to lie, ever, no matter what. Because I believe that honesty really will make your life better. I have managed to stay true to that decision almost perfectly over the last 5 years. I don’t say that to brag about my honesty, but to show how strongly I believe in telling the truth.
Some truths are easy to tell, others seem impossibly difficult, and sometimes it is actually impossible to tell the truth because you don’t know what is true. The truth is powerful and often complicated, and It is very rare for a single person to have all the information about a given scenario, even if they think that they do. You might not know what exactly what is true, but I guarantee that you will know if you are lying or not. So even if you can’t tell the truth, you can always choose not to lie.
“Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie”
Lying is never a victimless crime. Usually a lie ends up hurting someone, and it always hurts the liar. When you lie, you take the easy way out. You are deceiving someone because you are too scared of what the consequences might be if they knew the truth. And anytime you take the easy way out of a difficult situation it weakens your ability to shoulder responsibility. Then the next time you are faced with the choice to either take on some responsibility or allow other to carry your weight, you are more likely to place the burden on others.
“Lies make you weak”
It is very possible to lie without saying a word. Lying means that you are intentionally deceiving someone. I’m not talking about when you are throwing someone a surprise party and you have to try and make them think that you are going to the movie theatre because you really want to see Avengers and not because your friends need time to decorate. I mean deceiving someone because your scared of what would happen if they knew the truth. And allowing someone to believe something that you know is not true is intentional deception, A.K.A. lying.
“If anyone knows the right thing and fails to do it, for him it is sin”
“If you have something to say, silence is a lie”
Telling the truth does not mean that you can’t have secrets. If there is something you don’t want someone to know you absolutely do not have to tell them. As long as you are not withholding some information that they have a right to know. What is does mean is that if they ask you about whatever it is that you are keeping secret, you will say to them directly “I’m not going to tell you about that” or something to that effect, rather than making up a lie.
Telling the truth is often scary, because you don’t know how people will react to it, but that’s part of the joy of it. When you tell the truth in a situation where you would rather lie, you are facing the unknown. You are knowingly walking into a forest that you don’t know the way out of. And you are going to have to rely on the people you are being honest with to show you the way through. It is quite an adventure.
Honesty does have a side effect that I find particularly helpful: it produces integrity. Which makes sense, because if you really aren’t going to lie about anything ever, you aren’t going to do anything that you wouldn’t want others to know about. You naturally are going to behave the same way in private that you would around your friends, because you know that if for some reason they ask you about what you have been doing, the most you could do is say “it’s a secret” which can sound very suspicious at times. And consequently, if you have integrity, people will trust you more. If you say something, they will believe you. This may sound inconsequential at first, but when you find yourself in a tense situation where one or more people are lying about something, having your friends and family believe whatever you tell them simply because you are the one telling them feels like a breath of fresh air. (Unless of course you are lying, then it feels more like a guilt trip).
If you are ever going to be able to tell the truth (or at least not lie) all the time, you have to believe this idea: that whatever may come from telling the truth will always be the best possible outcome from that situation. Although the outcome that results from telling the truth may not be fun, or happy, or even seem bearable at the time, it will always be better than what would have happened if a lie had been told instead.
