Keeping It Real
One of my goals as a person is to be authentic. A large part of that is simply being honest. Simple honesty, though, is not easy.
We are not a truth-telling society. We lie to be polite, we lie to get ahead, we lie to make things easier, we lie out of fear, anger, desperation, laziness and even out of love. In committing myself to not lying, I found that one of my stumbling blocks was that I would catch myself lying without thinking. So in order to keep myself honest, I sometimes had to go back and correct myself: "No, that's not true, I don't know why I said that, here's the truth." And then, of course, there are the times when some button has been pushed, which for me usually has to do with looking stupid or bad in front of someone who's being arrogant, when telling the truth is going to really, really hurt. It takes serious discipline not to lie in those circumstances.
Once I got good and going with this honesty thing, I could see the social fallout. I'd always been a truthful person, and I'd already encountered awkwardness due to my insistence on sticking to the truth in certain situations, but when I made it an actual principle, became the all-truth-all-the-time channel, I found it changed a good bit of my interactions with people. Take the question, "How are you?" Almost invariably answered with "fine", but if you're committed to being honest, and an authentic person to boot, you hardly ever give this answer. Real answers, like "sick", "tired" and "not so good" don't fit the approved social groove. Some people appreciate the honesty; many do not.
Also, I have to watch my words carefully even in trivial situations. When I'm about to say something like "If that happens again, I'll kill myself", I pull back and ask myself if that's true. And of course it isn't, so I've had to change around what for most people is a normal speech pattern: the dramatic overstatement. I still use sarcasm, mind you. And jokes. Honesty shouldn't eliminate humour, and if it does, I swear I'm going to...
There are more severe consequences to being honest, depending on who you know. I currently have one former friend spewing venom and lies at me via her LJ. My crime? She asked me to lie to her girlfriend for her, and I refused to do so, which in her eyes made me disloyal. This is an extreme example, but you may well know a person or two to whom telling the truth would have negative consequences, and it isn't always possible to let the matter rest in silence. My choice, then, means that if I can't get along with someone without lying, I just won't get along with them.
The last point I'd like to make on the topic is that I don't advocate brutal honesty. Somebody-or-other once observed that brutal honesty contains more brutality than honesty. There are three questions from Shinto teachings that one is supposed to ask before speaking: Is it true?, Is it kind? and Is it necessary? I don't occupy myself too much with the necessity of my words - I like to talk too much to do that! But I do try to remember to keep what I say as kind as possible while still being honest. And of course, keeping the lip zipped is a great strategy. Silence is never dishonest.
We are not a truth-telling society. We lie to be polite, we lie to get ahead, we lie to make things easier, we lie out of fear, anger, desperation, laziness and even out of love. In committing myself to not lying, I found that one of my stumbling blocks was that I would catch myself lying without thinking. So in order to keep myself honest, I sometimes had to go back and correct myself: "No, that's not true, I don't know why I said that, here's the truth." And then, of course, there are the times when some button has been pushed, which for me usually has to do with looking stupid or bad in front of someone who's being arrogant, when telling the truth is going to really, really hurt. It takes serious discipline not to lie in those circumstances.
Once I got good and going with this honesty thing, I could see the social fallout. I'd always been a truthful person, and I'd already encountered awkwardness due to my insistence on sticking to the truth in certain situations, but when I made it an actual principle, became the all-truth-all-the-time channel, I found it changed a good bit of my interactions with people. Take the question, "How are you?" Almost invariably answered with "fine", but if you're committed to being honest, and an authentic person to boot, you hardly ever give this answer. Real answers, like "sick", "tired" and "not so good" don't fit the approved social groove. Some people appreciate the honesty; many do not.
Also, I have to watch my words carefully even in trivial situations. When I'm about to say something like "If that happens again, I'll kill myself", I pull back and ask myself if that's true. And of course it isn't, so I've had to change around what for most people is a normal speech pattern: the dramatic overstatement. I still use sarcasm, mind you. And jokes. Honesty shouldn't eliminate humour, and if it does, I swear I'm going to...
There are more severe consequences to being honest, depending on who you know. I currently have one former friend spewing venom and lies at me via her LJ. My crime? She asked me to lie to her girlfriend for her, and I refused to do so, which in her eyes made me disloyal. This is an extreme example, but you may well know a person or two to whom telling the truth would have negative consequences, and it isn't always possible to let the matter rest in silence. My choice, then, means that if I can't get along with someone without lying, I just won't get along with them.
The last point I'd like to make on the topic is that I don't advocate brutal honesty. Somebody-or-other once observed that brutal honesty contains more brutality than honesty. There are three questions from Shinto teachings that one is supposed to ask before speaking: Is it true?, Is it kind? and Is it necessary? I don't occupy myself too much with the necessity of my words - I like to talk too much to do that! But I do try to remember to keep what I say as kind as possible while still being honest. And of course, keeping the lip zipped is a great strategy. Silence is never dishonest.