Honesty – Honestly?
By Char Vinar
Honesty is an interesting concept, not easily defined nor a definite black and white thing.
If you are planning a surprise party for your sister and she asks if there is something going on because you're acting weird. You lie and tell her no, nothing going on, you’re just tired. Is that a lie? You probably are tired.
Your new friend is wearing the ugliest sweater ever to grace the human form. She’s elated and exuberantly says “don’t you just love it??”. You smile and lie, “yeah, it’s great on you!” when in fact it wouldn’t even make a garbage can look good, which is where it belongs.
Waiting for the call with the results from tests no one knew you were having, dodging the odd glances and constant “are you ok?” question from friends, colleagues and family, with the same lackluster response, “sure, I am fine, I am good, just got stuff to do”. Is that being honest? Anyone who has ever waited for test results knows how hard it is to keep it under wraps and not worry anyone precisely at the moment you most need them to know everything and be supportive.
Honesty is not a cut and dried thing for most humans. When it comes to sparing feelings, not worrying others and making sure plans go as they must, all of us are willing to bend the rules, if not turn them into a pretzel, for all kinds of reasons. Are we being dishonest, or just choosing selective honesty for the sake of the situation?
There are the so called “little white lies” on one end of the spectrum and there is the out and out pathological inability to tell the truth on the other. Is one of those more wrong than the other, more honest than the other? That would be a judgment call and up to the one determining the situation. Those with fundamentalist beliefs would say any lie of any kind is always wrong. Most of mankind fall somewhere in the middle, or at least try to.
Then there are those who you use “honesty” as a weapon. They will say, “I am brutally honest” as a way to excuse their lack of a filter or caring about what anyone else thinks or feels. They use honesty as a way to get out of a bad situation or to justify their behavior when it is less than stellar. It wasn’t their fault you got insulted or your feelings hurt, they were just being honest.
I dated a man who told me I was the most intelligent, funny, kind and easy to talk to woman he had ever met. I took that as a very nice compliment.
Then he continued. He didn’t think any serious relationship could ever happen between us and he didn’t want to see me any longer.
There was a deafening silence while I dealt with the whiplash he had just given me. I finally said
“I don’t understand. You just said I was wonderful, what’s the problem?” He casually said “you won’t like it.” I was pretty sure he was right, but told him I thought I deserved the truth and an honest answer.
“The problem is, you’re fat. I don’t like large women, I find them repulsive.”
Now I was pissed off. “Then why have we been dating for a month??”
“I thought maybe I could get past it, maybe all the other good things were enough, and I would be able to overlook it, but I can’t, I just don’t find you physically attractive enough for a relationship. I told you you wouldn’t like it. Hey, you asked, I am just being totally honest”.
No, he was just being a first class, prime, grade A, center cut, jerk! For the record, I was a size 14 at that time, which for my height was exactly the right size. Was he being honest? To his mind he was, but he certainly wasn't going to win any awards for tack and kindness!
One of my most favorite movies is The Wizard of Oz. How can you go wrong with a movie about two women trying to kill each other fighting over a pair of shoes, and they were red shoes at that!
I was 10 years old when I watched it for the first time. I loved it! Well, except the flying monkeys, those terrified me.
At the end, when Dorothy is standing there, watching the wizard float away in the hot air balloon, she panics and says to Glenda “now what am I going to do? How will I get home, he was my last chance!”
The incredibly talented Billie Burke, who played Glenda, with that one-of-a-kind-voice, tells Dorothy, “My dear, you can return home any time you wish! You’ve always had the power, you just had to learn it for yourself”. Then of course, the whole clicking her heels three times and a cultural icon was born.
I remember, even at that age thinking “well that was stupid! Why didn’t she just tell her about the shoes instead of making her go through all that stuff!”.
Glenda had withheld the truth from Dorothy, she wasn’t honest about what the shoes could do, or even that she knew what they were capable of. That is one of those gray areas of honesty, the withholding of information. Is that not being honest, is that lying, is that neither or is it both? A very gray area indeed.
Honesty as a character trait, like so many others, has at its core, intention. What defines whether a person is truly honest is what the person has in mind as the end game in any situation.
Keeping a surprise party secret? Good intentions. Sparing your friend’s feelings over her ugly sweater? Good intentions. That clown I was dating? His intentions were selfish, immature, and unkind, all of which are bad intentions, even if he considered what he had to say as being honest.
Honesty has many close cousins - truth, authenticity, integrity, genuineness. There is overlap with these traits and as a rule, they sort of all hang out together…. or don’t….as the case may be, in any one person. They also tell on each other.
If someone claims to be honest, but lacks authenticity, chances are very good they are not honest.
You won’t find someone who is genuine that is a liar. Those with integrity tend to be very honest and it shows in everything they do.
The sage nugget of honesty is always the best policy, I think holds true in most situations. Being honest is less work, means you don’t have to try to remember what lies you told to who about what. Whether or not it is the best policy, again, depends on the situation and the intention behind the honesty.
Having worked in Intelligence during my time in the military, I can tell you first hand, if our government told us everything that was going on behind the scenes, none of us would ever get a good nights sleep! Is the withholding of that entire truth being dishonest? Not at all, that is maintaining one of the central core policies of public safety, tell only what is on a “need to know” basis to protect the citizens and the security of our nation and to give our citizens a reasonable sense of normalcy in their everyday lives. Whether or not a person agrees with that policy is a whole other discussion. It is maintained for the greater good of everyone.
The bottom line with honesty and any other character trait is that it comes down to your own conscience and what you are willing and able to live with. Those who are dishonest, in my experience, are also usually very unhappy with their lives, with themselves or with situations they feel trapped in and helpless to change. Many also lack self-esteem and feel the need to embellish to appear to be more than they are.
In those cases, often all they feel in control of temporarily, is their own actions and words. They tend to use both to try to find balance, to fulfill their needs somehow and to reshape, even if just momentarily, the world they find themselves in that is controlling them. The pain they are in bleeds out into the rest of their life because they are not honest with themselves, first and foremost, and can’t or won’t change their circumstances. Being honest with yourself can be the hardest thing there is, because in many cases it will require action of some kind and usually not the easy stuff.
Honesty with the world begins with honesty with ourselves and telling ourselves the real truth about who we are, what we are about in this world and what we plan, want and hope to contribute during our time here. Those sound easy, its harder to do in practice, mainly because it requires self examination, and, well, being completely honest.
To be self-aware and honest with ourselves is the highest calling we will ever achieve. Shakespeare knew this when he penned those immortal words, “to thine own self be true”. It all starts within us.
As with any character trait, honesty is an inside job and to paraphrase Glenda, you’ve always had the power, you just have to figure it out for yourself.
Char Vinar has been a writer literally her entire life, being first published professionally at age 14. If it has ever needed words, she likely has written it at one time or another. She’s currently writing children’s books, memoir and adventure romance in her light filled office in Clayton, NC.
