So, today’s topic (yeah, I know it isn’t Sunday. April and I were bored, and felt that, you, the devoted reader deserved another blogging before Sunday) is all about honesty. I guess mostly in relationships, but in everything really.
So, in my opinion, honesty is one of the most important virtues to have. Not skirting around difficult issues when they need to be addressed, not making up half-truths, and not lying in anyway. I try to hold myself up to my standard. I try not to put too much padding on what I say, and sometimes, a lot of times, it makes me come off as blunt, as callous, all those type of adjectives. But, I believe in the better interest of society, of people, of the world, my attempt to tell the truth in what I do is a good thing.
Right now, of course I’m talking very generally about the issue of lying. But, that is because, to relate lying to relationships I believe that it needs to be first supported outside of relationships. You can’t just be a truthful person to your significant other and then lie to all your friends about how much you and your partner had sex over the weekend. It doesn’t work like that. Well, actually, it sometimes does, but that’s beside the point. The point is that lying, in whatever shape or form, whether it is for ill or good, is not a good thing to do. Lying to protect someone isn’t helping them, it isn’t helping simplify the situation or dull the pain. It is only making the later revelation of the truth that much harsher. That of course assumes that the person who was lied to finds out the truth later, but even if this isn’t the case, the issue still stands as it isn’t just an issue of someone’s feelings being hurt more by lying to them, but as a moral issue that should be eliminated all together.
Now, I’m not going to say that all lying is necessarily totally bad. Sometimes it has its merits, but, no matter the merits of the situation that lying is conveying, I don’t think it is the proper course of action.
To reference the title of this post: Well, I don’t know if honesty is never mean, though that could depend on your definition of mean. It can easily be mean, calling someone fat (when they actually are), saying someone’s hair is a mess (when it really is). But, the way that honesty is delivered is one of the ways in which this gruffness can be combated. By calling an obese person fat you aren’t actually helping them by telling the truth. But, in theory, the truth can be helpful in that, in the example of the obese person, it can get them to realize that, yes, they are overweight and that they need to do something about it. And that can help the situation.
Of course, this doesn’t always happen, sometimes the truth is just something that is truthful, and not something that is necessary for personal improvement.
Ok, I feel that I’m getting sort of really general here, let me try to figure out what I’m trying to say really…
Ok. So, I don’t know, a lot of that is just really repetitive. So, onto relationship honesty:
In a relationship, one of the most important things that can happen is that the couple can share a bond of trust. This doesn’t mean that you need to tell each other every little detail of each other’s lives, but that you can trust the person to be there for you, to listen to you, to help you. This of course can develop in friendship as well. But the important thing about this trust is that it should be honest. It shouldn’t involve you always saying your significant other looks good in that pair of pants, when really, they don’t look good in them. Honesty should be paramount in that you can say anything and it can be accepted as truth. The other major point of relationships where honesty is important is in breaking up, as April and I dealt with on Sunday. But I’ll recap: when breaking up be honest about the reason why, don’t give lame excuses and reason you two can’t be together anymore. It’s never appreciated and doesn’t come off as sincere or truthful at all. So, just tell the truth.
Alright, to finish I’m going to talk about my biggest paradox in my advocacy of honesty: I’m both really sarcastic and I tell a lot of jokes. Now, a lot of the time, sarcasm and jokes deal with untrue subject matter and those make up my biggest paradox in terms of honesty. I am willing to tell almost anyone I know almost anything if they ask it of me, but I well berate, insult, belittle and be sarcastic to almost anyone as well. And most of the time, the things I say are not true, I don’t mean what I say, but, is that really an excuse for what I do? Eh, not really. But that is a discussion for another time really.
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