Honesty, What a Concept

On Friday, January 16th, 1999 John Stossel of the ABC 20/20 News team did a story on Brad Blanton’s book “Radical Honesty: How to transform your life by telling the truth.” I watched it because I wanted to find out what exactly “radical” honesty was.

As it turns out, “radical honesty” is ....well....honesty. What astounded me most about the program was that people thought telling the truth WAS a radical idea. Don’t you find that just a bit odd?

At the end of the story, Barbara Walters even warned viewers, “don't try this at home without someone trained in this.” Tears ran down my face as I rocked with laughter and disbelief. Don't try this at home?!? Honesty?!? Are we so lost as a culture that we regard honesty as a dangerous pursuit without a trained “non-liar” at our sides?? Has the world become so warped that we consider telling the truth, a dangerous exercise? It seemed extremely bizarre to me.

But yet, maybe it's not so bizarre. Haven't all of us been taught that it's better to lie to someone than to hurt their feelings? That there are just some things you simply never, never tell another? We're not suppose to tell anyone when we've had an extramarital affair, especially not our spouse. And god forbid we're honest with each other about sexual matters.

But have we become so adept at lying, that we've “forgotten” that we are, in fact, lying? Have we forgotten HOW to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”?

“The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.”
--George Bernard Shaw

Perhaps we were taught to lie because we as a society believe we actually can hurt another emotionally. We believe we have the POWER to make another person feel something emotionally.

So who's responsible for how we or another chooses to respond to words? If you truly had the power to make people feel certain emotions, then you should be able to create other people's reactions at will. If you said the same thing to thousands of people, you should be able to get an identical emotional response from all of them, right? But the fact is, you’d get as many different responses as there are people. Each would react according to their belief systems and interpretations of your meaning.

If people understood everyone is responsible for their own emotions, we'd feel freer to say what we think and feel. Most times, it's our own lack of trust in ourselves to be able to deal with other's reactions, that is the stumbling block to our honesty. “How will *I* feel if this person reacts badly” we ask ourselves. “I might feel guilty, so I wont tell the whole truth.”

Because face it, people WILL get angry and hurt sometimes in reaction to our honesty. But the alternative of living lives filled with lies and half-truths is not much of an alternative. We end up walking around on eggshells, monitoring our every word, and trying to predict how others might respond. It's a slow, awkward process of communication.

I agree with Dr. Blanton. Honesty about everything truly does open the doors to intimacy, love, and dynamic relationships. Without it, we're all just actors on a stage, reading our scripted lines. And to some degree, I think everyone knows we're pretending to be truthful. It's like we're all walking around holding dead chickens in our hands, making deals with each other. “Pretend you don't see my chicken, and I’ll pretend I don't see yours.” It's a scam, but one we're pulling over our own eyes.

I have this impossible dream about everyone on earth standing up, and all at the same time shouting out, “I'm a liar!”. And as we all look at each other and smile, we could start anew and begin fresh. Then, we could continue our lives with a willingness to trust that its okay to think and feel what we do, and have the courage to speak our truth.

Imagine being real and genuine with each other. Imagine what the world would be like if you could actually believe what people tell you. It might get a bit rocky at times, but it would “radically” change the world.

So maybe honesty is a radical idea in this day and age, but lets do our part in "telling the truth" so honesty becomes common place. The love that would follow would be far from common.

“You know how it is when you decide to lie and say the check is in the mail, and then you remember it really is? I'm like that all the time.”
--Steven Wright

next: How To Improve Your Relationships