Honesty As A Necessity...

avoid the need to add this stamp to your daily repertoire with one easy step: honesty.
i've seen a recurring theme lately in conversations with several of my friends, one of which i witnessed pretty closely this weekend. i've always attempted to keep myself from having issues with honesty, and i do my best to keep my nose clean in that department. it's just a miserable situation when you find yourself caught up in lie after lie. some people, i find, get so tied up in lies, that they forget where one lie ends and another begins; while others i know have lied about things for so long that they have accepted it as the truth.

honesty is a huge part of life, and more specifically in relationships. and i'm not just talking about relationships with significant others, or friends, but even in the relationship that you develop with the bank teller during your 60 second interaction. honesty and integrity is present in every interaction, every time; whether you realize it or not. in fact, i consider it to be a necessity. i've always had the uncanny ability, along with my friend mike, to find out EVERYTHING about anything if i need to; which in turn has taught me to smell a liar from a mile away.

i have always thought myself to be a fairly honest person, even by society's standards. but what society considers honest and what true honesty really is, are two separate things. we've been systematically taught in our culture to make lying a part of our lives. like i said before, and we all know someone like this, some do it so often that we don't even notice it anymore.

honesty is telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth;” but somehow society's definition has become skewed to say that honesty is to tell the truth only if it doesn't make anyone uncomfortable, doesn't cause a conflict, and/or makes you look good.

i'm not even talking about the big lies, but more about the consistent, persistent "lies of omission" and "white lies" that get told on a daily basis. for me, i didn't even consider these small untruths to be lies until i experienced the exact opposite- the whole truth.

i haven't always realized my dishonesty and how much of myself i held back when being dishonest. this dishonesty caused me to feel disconnected from others and created small walls in my relationships. when i withheld my whole truth, i withheld others from seeing all of me. this may be fine in some relationships, but not in ones where you want all of yourself to be loved, even those parts that you may judge yourself as bad or wrong.

eventually i realized that if i wanted to be fully accepted, i was going to have to let others see all of me. this can be very scary, because what if it made others angry, or hurt, or caused others to decide that "all of me" was not something that they wanted to be a part of? but then i remembered, what kind of relationships would i have if my friends only knew part of me? i've wrote before about 'secrets,' but there are very few secrets that i keep from others, most i just keep from myself...

i'm glad that i've consciously chosen the path of honesty and integrity. unfortunately, the people that need to read this, that i really wrote this 'for,' are too busy or just don't care to read it. they even lie to themselves, telling themselves that they too are honest. they'll realize someday, hopefully before it's too late.