Honestly?
So the other day I was reading an article in the July Esquire about something called Radical Honesty. In essence, to practice radical honesty you must tell all truth all of the time. He says, according to the article's author A.J. Jacobs, that "we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. It's the only path to authentic relationships. It's the only way to smash through modernity's soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing."'You'll have really bad times, you'll have really great times, but you'll contribute to other people because you haven't been dancing on eggshells your whole f---ing life. It's a better life,' explained the 66-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist Brad Blanton, creator of the RH movement.
The only good times to lie, says Blanton, is if you're hiding Anne Frank in the attic and the Nazis are pounding on your door, or to the government; his example was the IRS. He supposedly practices what he preaches, but to me comes off as a boor and a bore.
Mark Twain once said "Always tell the truth. That way, you don't have to remember what you said." That may very well be true itself, but you'll be sitting in a room telling the truth to the air because you'll not keep your friends very long.
I thought of trying the RH approach for a day, and couldn't imagine myself telling the naked truth all day long. There are just some things you don't need to share with someone unless your motives are pure.
Which brings me to something I've practiced now and again. Whenever I receive a bit of "truth", especially if it's something that contradicts information that someone I know has been acting on (for instance, I find out that the guy a close friend has been dating is seeing three other people, and she thinks she is the only one), before I go running to my friend, I stop and think about my motives. Are they pure? Do I really think that by telling my friend this information I'm helping her, or is it going to just satisfy my need to gossip? Or even more terribly, to indulge in a bit of schadenfreude?
Here's an exercise: For 24-hours observe what you say and to whom. Are you telling the truth, or lying? What are your motives for doing so? I'd love to hear how your experiment goes.
Comments
I think it was my own spiritual quest that led me to be more purposeful in my actions and words. With the belief that words do wield extreme power, not only in terms of hurting people's feelings but in far deeper magical ways, it only seemed right to me that I had to watch what I said.
I cannot claim total success. I think I am most mindful when I am talking to my children, of course. I do not, for instance, choose to tell my daughter she is being a pain in the ass even when she is being exactly that. So I would disagree with the total truth approach there, because I don't think a 3-year old needs to hear that. On the other hand, there is a certain freedom that can come from letting the adults in one's life know where they stand. And it is precisely because I come a little more closely to this approach than most people that my ass is always in trouble...