I have been thinking about honesty a lot lately. The truth. If you asked any given person what their greatest fear is, they would probably say something like, "Always being alone" or "Failure." But I would argue that for most of us, what we really fear most is the truth. Whether it is the truth about life or the truth about ourselves... there is something about total honesty that makes us completely vulnerable. So much so that a lot of times the person we have the most trouble being honest with is ourselves. We create these pseudo-truths, versions of honesty that protect us from harm. All the while the real truth, the whole truth remains buried under layers of half truths where judgment and hurt cannot reach it.
In the same way, I think we often create a version of ourselves that we choose to believe is true. We learn the characteristics we have that seem acceptable to others or ourselves and become convinced that this is who we are. But behind this version of ourselves, all of our shortcomings and mistakes and ugliness lay hidden. So we split ourselves in two, perpetually sifting through what we include in our truth and what we do not. The problem with this is, when you are only presenting the world with part of yourself, only part of you can be known and loved. I wonder if anyone would feel lonely if they knew that they were fully known and fully loved by another. My guess is no. And yet, there is a very large risk wrapped up in this predicament of total honesty. Opening yourself to the possibility of an all-embracing love leaves you equally open to hurt and shame at its deepest level. At what point does the reward outweigh the risk?
Now if you're thinking "she just talked herself into a philosophical oblivion" (or something along those lines), you are right, and it happens a lot. But I say all that to say... circumstances recently have caused me to question the risks and rewards of honesty. While on a much smaller scale than mentioned above, Im finding the rewards of honesty with myself and the people around me to be pleasantly surprising. And coming from someone who has experienced the hurt of being fully known and not so fully loved or loved at all, Im realizing that may not always be the case. Honesty isnt without hope, and the risk will probably be worth it again.
1 comment:
Hey there Britfu,
I'm so glad that you have started blogging! I love getting to hear what's going on inside your head and heart. Honesty always seems to be such a relevant topic. So much of the beauty that I have seen and experienced in God, relationships, people, the world, and even myself has resulted from me or someone else facing thier fears and speaking/writing with courageous honesty. In my own life, it seems like Truth is usually beautiful or at least helps lead me to something beautiful but is rarely (if ever) pretty. For me, honesty makes it possible to get a better view of reality in all its raw, unpolished, messy beauty. Sometimes it takes more courage than I have, but frequently reality, the truth of who I am, and vulnerability aren't nearly as scarry and terrible as I had convinced myself that they were while I was running from them. Running gets pretty exhausting and lonely and I love the freedom I get whenever I have the guts to stop...
Anyways I thought I would share some quotes with ya...
"...attain freedom from himself--and avoid the lot of those who live their whole lives without finding themselves in themselves."
Dostoevsky
"Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls to disrespect himself and others."
Dostoevsky
I've been learning lately about how disrespectful (of ourselves and others) a lack of honesty ultimately is.
The next three quotes about being honest towards yourself and others about who you are are from Thomas Merton. Often times, I have a lot of trouble trying to distinguish truth but typically being honest with others, God, and myself about myself ends up being a good place for me to start and tends to get me somewhere.
“Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. This is the man that I want to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.”
“The world cultivates the false self, ignores the real one, and therein lies the great irony of human existence: the more we make of ourselves, the less we actually exist.”
“Thus I use up my life…and love to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that would only become visible when something visible covered its surface."
...So that was a ridiculously long comment. Sorry if I babbled on but I was enjoying myself.
P.S. I do hope that the risk does seem worth it again (for all of us).
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