Honesty. It’s such a lonely word. Everyone is so untrue. So says Billy Joel. So say I.
Do you suppose that’s right? Everyone is so untrue?
I have been untrue. I have betrayed those I love the most. I have told small fibs and I have told damned dirty lies. Most of all I have massaged the truth for various reasons. I have told people what I thought they wanted to hear, and I have withheld information from people because it seemed expedient to me at the time.
We have already established that we live but once that we know for sure. Anyone speaking with certainty is manufacturing and selling certainty. So why would we spend our precious time on dishonesty? On telling someone the Earth is flat or that the sun don’t shine? Why do we spend our time creating intricate webs of deceit of which we must try to keep track and for which we will eventually, almost always, at least in the best case, be held to account?
It’s difficult to talk about honesty in personal terms for a couple of reasons. First, it’s humiliating to tell the world, (or at least several readers) about some of my more debased activities. I have admitted to being foolish, being a thief, being violent. Must I now admit to being a liar as well?
I suppose I must. And I will. But I also do not want to implicate others in doing so, and that’s the thing about dishonesty, it touches others. It is told in the context of a great arc of humanity and it’s always one thing leading to another. Lies beget lies.
Once upon a time, years ago, I smoked cigarettes. I knew it was bad for me, I knew they caused cancer, and I knew that it was not something my wife would approve of or a behavior she would appreciate. So I tried to hide it. Which I see now is foolishness on the highest order. Especially if you knew my wife. She’s a super taster, she tastes things in coffee and other foods that I can’t. And part of that is her olfactory system. And another aspect of that is that if I fart on a Tuesday she’ll still be suffering the following Saturday.
I was 0% able to hide my shameful secret from her and yet I tried. I guess I didn’t want her to be disappointed in me. I’ve heard that excuse before, I’ve used that excuse before.
The adult thing to have done would have been to square up and take responsibility for my actions. “Yes, I smoke cigarettes. Wise or not, it’s the course of action that I’m choosing.”
And then, also as an adult, I would have the opportunity to square up with my consequences. She may in fact be disappointed in me. She may in fact find my decision unsatisfactory. But how much sweeter, how much healthier would it have been for us to have been on the same page all the while.
As it was I lied to her by omission often, and then sometimes I lied to her outright. She is my closest friend. I remain ashamed.
There is a certain life force that comes from putting a thing in your hand and looking hard at it and deciding if it’s something worth prioritizing. Smoking cigarettes. Starting a family. Learning a language or practicing an instrument. What you do is, you hold out your hand and you imagine the thing. A guitar pick. A cigarette. A lifetime of child rearing.
You look at it and say to yourself, “I’m not going to prioritize this thing”, and you pick it up and set it aside. Literally or metaphorically. And then you sit there with your empty hand and you decide if it belongs in a prioritized place in your life. Or not.
I’ve mentioned my friend and mentor. The guy I stole $250 from. In addition to my theft, I lied to him! He asked if I had taken $250 from his account. Point blank. And I only confessed when he said that he was going to go down to the bank and review the camera footage. I think he was prepared to believe me. I don’t think he was calling my bluff. But I had not considered that ATMs have cameras built in. It was not some magnanimous strength of character that forced me to come clean. It was the threat of an even deeper shame.
We remain very close to this day, and we periodically laugh about that incident.
What allows us to laugh is not that the incident was inconsequential or otherwise unimportant. It’s the growth that we’ve both experienced in the intervening years. I believe he would share his PIN number with me today.
And, here’s the other thing I believe, we are all implicated. We’re all guilty. We’re both dirty baby, that’s just the way it goes.
Are you not guilty? I’m not asking if you’re a habitual, filthy, narcissistic psychopathic liar, bent on consistent deception for your own exclusive gain. I’m asking if you always tell the truth. And the answer is almost certainly no.
The truth is very often inconvenient, and sometimes it even hurts people. Sometimes the truth is painful to open our eyes and look directly at. Sometimes we’re unable to square up and look at it ourselves and so we tell a lie to avoid the discomfort. And sometimes we can see down the road a piece. We can see how the truth will hurt the one(s) we love and so we fabricate an alternate reality that we think they may be more comfortable with. This is foolishness. But it’s what we do.
Every lie I’ve ever told has eaten a piece of my soul. It’s eaten away at my fabric, and the fabric of our souls is like bone density; very difficult to re-grow. And the closer the lie is to our own core, our own most-cherished loved ones, the uglier it is to retell.
I think also of the lies we tell ourselves. What a waste of time! What a powerful waste of our one precious life. The fibs, the half-truths, the dishonest reframing of our past.
It comes down, often, to the difficulty we have in facing our own bad choices, our own bad intentions, our own internal lazinesses. And so we reframe these things and blame others.
Memory is a funny thing, and not one I can pretend to understand. But I’ve read a few things, I’ve listened to a few podcasts and I’ve experienced enough to know that our memories aren’t always accurate. They don’t always tell an honest story of our past.
We tell ourselves a story about an incident with another person, (it’s almost always involving another person), and we tell it again, and again, we retell it to ourselves and maybe we repeat the poorly or dishonestly remembered memory to others, and pretty soon it’s our truth. We cannot even distinguish the lie anymore. It simply is as a part of our history.
How sad that we’re able to lie to ourselves and rob ourselves of the good lessons life is attempting to teach us. Every bad choice is an object lesson waiting to happen. I think of the stories I’ve told about my business, about my occupation and how I found myself here. I keep the high points honest–it’s too complicated to lie about the high points. But all of the in-the-middle bits have sometimes been up for interpretation. The way I share the story, the bits of the story I choose to tell and omit. And how can I be wholly honest with the Chamber of Commerce Greeters on a Friday morning anyway, I ask you? I can’t tell them all the details. So which ones do I prioritize? My memory gets foggy after twenty-ish years in this business and I spin a yarn.
There are also lies of omission. The things we don’t say. We don’t tell. And I guess it’s a sort of a gradient for each person. How honest are you? How honest do you want to be?
As I get older I desire greater honesty. The honest truth is that I come from a long line of people who struggle with honesty. I won’t name names–that would be unkind and inappropriate for this venue.
But I’m the one now–I’m the middle aged man, soaring high through the prime of his life. I’m the one with kids in my home learning how to be in the world. I’m the one who at least some people are affected by.
When I was young I could lie to my parents and maybe they’d know my deceit and maybe they wouldn’t. Sometimes it had a negative effect on them, but often it was a buzzing gnat in their lives; an annoyance more than an attack.
When I’m very old, what will the point of lying be, anyway? Nobody will be there listening and clinging to my words in the way they do now. I won’t have children in my space, I won’t have employees or an employer. And everyone will assume, (potentially correctly), that I am simply addled.
So, this is my time for modeling good behaviors. And for me, Honesty isn’t about never lying. I am human. I will slip and fall and bust open my own lip. Honesty means modeling the walk-back.
Can I do it gracefully? Can I return to the scene of the crime? When I snap at my wife, or massage the truth, or tell an outright falsehood... do I have what it takes to stop the car, turn around, and say, “I was wrong. That was a lie. Here is the truth.”
I’ve learned that dishonesty is nestled down deep in the hearts of humans. It is in us all. The question is not whether we have it. The question is whether we have the courage to correct it. To look our loved ones in the eye, admit the fault, and pursue goodness.
