Truth Telling

How often do you lie?  No.  Really.  Be honest.

Do you consider yourself an honest person?  I know I do. 

I work very hard to tell the truth all the time.  Not just when it's convenient or easy for me. 

I'm honest even when it's hard. 

Even when it's nearly impossible. 
Even when it hurts me. 


Truth be told, I do try to make an exception about telling the whole truth to spare other people's feelings...

For example, if you bake a batch of turd flavored biscuits and think that they taste like cinnamon swirls, I'm not going to come right out, spoil your day and tell you that they taste like dog poop.


Now maybe that's mostly because, having never tasted dog poop, I am unsure of the flavor... It might be really good, but I'm not willing to give it a shot.  I know, very close minded of me... I'm ok with the label if it means I don't have to eat dog poop.

But I digress...

I will tell you that they're not my favorites.  I won't take another.  I might even say that it's "a very distinctive flavor" and I'll probably wait for you to turn away before I spit it quickly into a napkin (or the nearest trash can or even a potted plant if no other options exist) if you turn away fast enough.  But I won't say, "Boy!  These taste awful! Where ever did you find a recipe for crap flavored cookies?"

That would be hurtful. 

(That said, I'm probably not eating any more cookies that you bake.  Or, now that I think of it, anything else that comes out of the kitchen where you've been baking with dog poop...) 

There I go again....

Nor do I look at drawings that my children make for me and say, "What the hell is that supposed to be?  That's not a picture.  It just looks like scribbling to me." (Which, sometimes, it really does.) 

I instead look at them and tell them that I think that it's beautiful.  Which is true, now that I think about it....

I want them to know that I love them and that I love that they want to make things for me.  And if your mom doesn't cheerlead for you, who the heck is going to? 

I also try not to ruin the Tooth Fairy (though that took a lot of soul searching) or other magic for my kids (or anyone else's) while they're still young enough to believe it.  They're really looking forward to it.  It would crush them to find out that those things aren't real.

So, I don't go there.  I try to stick to my principles (being rigorously honest) without hurting other people...

But, as I've said before, I'm an addict.  It goes against my very nature to be honest.  The -ism wants me to lie, to cheat, to hide, to steal... 

It's just how we are.  It's another ugly truth. 

As with many things that go against my innate leanings as an addict, I've made a conscious choice to act differently than my instinct tells me to. 

I choose to be honest. 

Not necessarily the easiest choice, but the good things never seem to be the easiest choices for me.  And I choose it anyway.  Because it's the person I want to be, even if it's not the person I really am in my head.

How hard is it to be honest?

In a word.... VERY!

Try it some time.  For one day, think about everything that you say before you say it and ask yourself, "Is this absolutely the truth?  All of it?" 

If you've ever seen the Jim Carrey movie, "Liar Liar", it's a little like that....

When I started being honest (which, for those keeping track and who've known me awhile, was around when I turned 18), it was a specific question that I had to ask myself all day long.  My first reaction was always to give the easiest answer that I could come up with.  Usually the one that I thought that the person that I was talking to wanted to hear...

So the question I asked myself was this:  "Is this as much of the truth as I can tell without purposely hurting anyone else's feelings?"

I used to have to ask myself the question 7 million times a day. 

Thankfully, now, it's much less.  It's more like habit.  I don't even notice it most of the time even though I know I still do it.

But true honesty is much harder than that.

You've read this far, you're thinking, "Yeah, I do that anyway."

But what about to yourself?

Do you always tell yourself the truth?

Do you always tell yourself the truth about yourself?

I would guess not.  I know I certainly don't.  One of the unforseen advantages of this blog is that the blog is helping me to be really honest about what I know about myself and what I see. 

Facing the ugly truths about yourself is hard.

But my dishonesty with myself extends to the lies that I've told myself about what kind of a person I am and the way that I see myself.  It's only this year that I'm finally able to admit that the picture that I carry around in my head of myself isn't accurate at all...

That's the part I have to work on next.  Fixing the lies in my head.....


Just Keep Coming Back.

So, how honest are you?  I'd love to hear...

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