Honesty

I’ve been given an action point by a mentor of mine – a chap who is helping me prepare my thoughts for a TED talk that I hope to be selected for. The action point is to write an article on honesty.

And to be honest, I don’t want to do it. No, that’s not strictly the truth of it – I want to write it, but I’m not sure how to write it with honesty. Because what is honesty anyway?

I have a feeling that it is something that exists only in absolute truth for a tiny moment, it is a feeling inside one’s innards of exactitude and rightness, a moment that will pass into history, and the road of my honesty will walk with me into my future, but the context of why I started the journey there, why I took the steps I took, leading directly back to that moment of honesty, will begin to look another way, will begin to be out of context to my starting point. What was honest back then, may not appear so honest here and now.?

Honesty is a complex thing.

Truth is a complex thing.

White lies and bravado sometimes seem simpler.

In fact, much of what we all put out into the world – our public faces – are not our true selves, they are the simplifications and ‘not said words, the faces that we feel are easier to look upon, easier to understand, easier to accept by other people.

Is that being honest?

Yes, maybe. Because we all do it, we all protect ourselves in these ways. We all play this game of branding and polished achievement. In short, we are all trying to appear at our best even when the truth of ourselves may be something else. There are some reading this who will be deliberately downplaying their best for the same reasons – pretending to be less powerful, less intelligent, less attractive in order to feel they may be more acceptable.

So, is honesty directly linked to acceptability? Is it directly linked to how courageous I am feeling? Is my ability, to be honest with myself and those around me dependent upon hope or vision I had of where my life would be by now. Does my ability to be honest depend upon whether my personal mathematics on this hoped-for reality of ‘success’ is in the positive or negative balance?

Yes. All of those factors, and more besides.

And does my being honest matter to you??

How many of you would prefer to know the real day-to-day existence of my life, my 3 am fears and shames? How many of you are happier with surface knowledge only? Who was it who said that the definition of an idiot was a person who when you asked how they were told you? There is comfort in being a little bit dishonest at times, some sort of kindness to it, politeness – a lack of burden. Brene Brown writes in one of her books about a man coming up to her after one of her shame and vulnerability talks she is so good at and, pointing over to his wife and teenage daughter in the background, challenges Brene to how men, in particular, might achieve this honesty, because as he then goes on to put it –“those women over there would rather see me dead on my white-knight charger than see the truth of my emotions.”

So, honestly, I am struggling to write the article on honesty. But truthfully, I’m going to give it my best shot. Perhaps you will give me your honest feedback about it when I do?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=YdeLnGULvrk&feature=share