The mind develops in such an odd way. When you’re a child you can’t understand anything and no one can understand you. Eventually, all those muddled words actually make sense and people can comprehend what you’re saying. Once you see how people react to your words, you use them to your benefit or misuse them until somebody tells you to shut the hell up and eventually you get the picture. When I was a kid I didn’t really say much. Sometimes I felt prompted to speak by elderly women who enjoyed the fact that I was uninhibited and less hyperactive than other kids. When they asked me questions I answered without making jokes or fidgeting and stuttering. I always felt like I could just tell the truth but somewhere along the way it became more important to keep secrets than speak my mind.
My ability to not tell the truth was celebrated while the truth was looked at as a burden or buzz kill. So you grow up constantly battling inside of yourself over what you should and shouldn’t say. If you like a guy you can’t just come up and say I like you. You have to stare and flirt with him because that gives you the ability to see whether or not he likes you back before you drop your guard and make your feelings more obvious. Guys can’t just walk up to a girl and say they want to have sex with her. They have to compliment, take her out to dinner, Talk on the phone for a few weeks or more before it gets on that level. But it’s all confusion. If a guy came up to me that I wanted to have sex with I really wouldn’t mind him saying that and we could still go out to dinner or not but it wouldn’t be offensive to me. At the same time if a guy I wasn’t attracted to came up and said that I would just decline and keep it moving. At least he would know up front how I feel and if he chose to take me out or buy me something it would be because he wanted to, not because he thought it would make me give it up. Now, how many guys do you know would do that? Gold diggers would be completely obsolete because the whole mentality of the gold digger is to use her sexuality to get paid whether she sleeps with you or not. That dishonesty that we have all grown accustomed to has allowed being a gold digger to even exist.
Honesty is so abnormal now. There was a time when a star getting plastic surgery was hidden until put on blast by the tabloids but now even the most common people are getting boob jobs and lip injections in hopes of being the next Pamela Anderson or just because they think it will make them feel good about themselves but that’s a lie. Being honest about getting a procedure done that alters your appearance is completely hypocritical. That’s like lying about the truth. Realistically, they either end up wanting more plastic surgery because they are trying to fix something that isn’t even in a physical form, they end up disfigured which makes them even more self conscious and depressed and in some cases they end up dead. Ain’t that something? All because you think bigger tits will block out the fact that you got molested or that you don’t know who your father is. That’s crazy.
We make it a habit to lie to one another and sometimes for no reason. When someone says, how are you, if you feel like shit you don’t say it. You just say good or fine or whatever your natural response is to that question and conceal your true feelings. But why? To spare a conversation or just to be dishonest. It’s a learned behavior that we accept from each other. If you don’t want to know how I feel then don’t ask. It’s not even about me telling you my life story but more about us missing that opportunity to comfort someone who may just need someone to act like they care. Even if you just say, are you okay or anything but we don’t want to know because we have our own drama series playing in our heads of what happened when we were kids or how work isn’t what you want it to be or you’re in a loveless marriage. When the person in front of you asks how you are you just lie. It’s not white, it’s just a lie. So where’s the balance? When is it okay to tell the truth? And I don’t mean about stupid shit like whether or not you think somebody is fat or ugly but about this life experience. It’s the reason we walk around with all this stress trapped inside of our bodies that develop into addictions and health issues. It’s the reason why we have therapists and psychologists because we can’t trust each other with our personal truths. We have families and friends who we don’t want to know our real thoughts and struggles so we turn to complete strangers. The paranoia of being critiqued at a family gathering or the word spreading through our close-knit group of friends about a downfall that we’re not proud of is so overwhelming that we let it eat away at our souls and find ourselves surrounded by people who will forever only know part of our story.
At the end of it all, you’re left with one side withholding the truth in fear of being judged and another side being judgmental of other people’s situations. This is what breeds the lies that we were introduced to years prior. Being honest doesn’t immediately connect with being an asshole. Being honest is almost a skill because we are so defensive and ready to tell anybody off who disagrees with our way of life. If your grown child comes to you and says you neglected her and she realizes that’s the reason she hates to be alone, accept it because it’s the truth. Instead of pointing out what they did wrong and what you did right, consider the fact that there were things you could have done better while raising them and deal with it. You can’t turn back the hands of time but, that acknowledgement could save their lives.
Being honest takes courage. It’s hard enough to tell someone that they have something in their teeth let alone admit to your friend that she needs to stop being a party girl and grow up. No matter what the situation, honesty is not easy but it’s necessary for us to stay connected as well as us maintaining our mental and physical health. Go against the grain. Be courageous. Have convictions. Your honesty could change the world.