Honesty...

  I’m going to lay it out there, spew some thoughts that have been on the front of my mind recently.  If you had to guess the actual percentage of honesty people share with you, would it be a high percentage?  Somewhere in the middle maybe, or if you are a cynic, the percentage would slide much, much lower.  Who tells the truth?

  I began this lowly space with grand intentions.  The spectrum of what I imagined to share was broad, though I didn’t and still don’t want to follow someone else’s mold.  Mostly, I wanted an outlet to share what was on my mind.  Let me premise though that inside of that optimistic ideal, I never set out to offend, shock, or cause dissension.  Yet saying that causes me to stop my tapping fingers and ask: If I never do any of those things, with or without intention, am I really being honest?  How long can I live in this smoothly spinning sphere without hitting a few bumps, speeding or slowing the spin of my wheels, or heaven forbid having to stop, scrap the whole thing and start over, without being branded a nasty failure.
   Is it possible Simply Me has an alter ego called Nasty Me?  We all have our moments, don’t we?  We can deny it all we want, and though the act of denial doesn’t help us one small bit, it may stave off the wolves long enough for us to sort it all out and get it together.  Or at least that is the ideal we’ve used to convince ourselves.

   What am I talking about…..sometimes I get carried away and forget.

   What is honesty?  It might be easier if I gave you an idea of what honesty isn’t.  And this here I know is everyone’s truth.  Look out folks, Nasty Me is about to be unleashed.

   Honesty isn’t smiling while telling a friend you are fine, when they can clearly see you are not.
   Honesty isn’t sacrificing your own desires and wants for those around you repeatedly and without reciprocation….let’s face it, at some point everyone realized that you’d give in. It’s called being walked all over.
   Honesty is not remaining silent when you know you need to speak up.
   Honesty is not to say you’ll call a friend knowing full well you likely won’t.

    I understand fully that there is a time and place for everything.  I also know that the more you push your own honesty down beneath the surface, the more difficult it becomes to be you.  (I find myself lost in this cycle too often)  I also believe the usual first question we ask, how are you… incites the cycle to continue.  Straight away we put on a face to respond.  So why ask that particular question, especially if you’re addressing a minimal acquaintance.  Do you expect them to lay it all out in the aisle between the peanut butter and snack puddings?  It drives me crazy, yet I ask it too.

   Now, I’m also not saying go spill your guts to the world.  All those little secrets, the truth behind your lies laid out for every self-indulgent, gossipy, sloth to talk over in hushed whispers.  No.  That’s not what I’m saying.
   I’m merely wondering how much topical truth is out there.  The small things we say each day, not the big, dark, daunting skeletons in our closets.
   Jane Austen encompasses this truth so simply, so clearly, and so perfectly correct.  Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.
   Ahh, now that’s something isn’t it!
   So perhaps after spending an itty bitty chunk of time pondering this, you will put in a dime sized effort to be purposefully honest in your small disclosures.  Maybe you’ll just walk away from the screen believing Nasty Me has indeed lost it, is no longer lighthearted and fun.  Maybe nothing happens.  Maybe Nasty Me needs to come out and play more often?
   I’ll tell you, I’ve been thinking about honesty a lot lately, (and here’s a confession: I have a heap of work to do here too).  So I will do my utmost best to be honest.  Maybe that means deflecting the questions I can’t answer instead of blurring the lines.  Maybe that means avoiding the chatsters at the grocery shop, at school, work, or church.  Maybe that means streamlining what I deem acceptable conversation.  Maybe it means saying; I can’t talk about it, or putting the harsh reality out there by stating -- it’s none of your business.  I may just stand in one spot, look down at my lovely shoes and grin broadly when approached with that dreaded question- how are you?
   People will always want to know, they will always ask, you will find yourself repeatedly in a position to share a partial or lesser truth.  It's what we do.
   I’ve been challenging myself to be more….whatever that means.  I know it’s not a perfect world, and I know I fall so far below that bar that it’s embarrassing, but I won’t give up trying even if the going is insanely slow and painfully awkward.

   Good luck!