Such a lonely word

As I keep returning to the importance of honesty, I don't want to give an elevated impression of myself. Yes, I am very honest, but it wasn't a deliberate thing.

It's not that I was an inveterate liar either. I suspect my childhood level of honesty was pretty normal, where I would try to avoid admitting things that embarrassed me or would get me in trouble, but not lying just for the sake of it, or doing that many things that would get me in trouble. There are two specific incidents that stick in mind.

One happened about a year after high school, when I called in sick to work because I wanted to go down to a Duck game. I had a ticket and a ride, and I really wanted to go, and the supervisor up to that point had been really spiteful about time off requests.

The problem is that the spiteful one was no longer in charge, so I lied to someone who might have given me the time off, and I felt guilty about deceiving her. I had to confess. I remember this as a turning point, because confessing was really embarrassing. Lying just wasn't worth it, and things that might make me want to lie were probably not worth it.

The other lie that sticks out happened in 5th or 6th grade, when a girl started ragging on me about shopping at K-Mart, and I said we shopped at Sears. One problem with that defense is that Sears really wasn't that cool either. Regardless, while we did shop at Sears sometimes, we shopped at K-Mart a lot more, and sometimes even at Goodwill.

Somewhere between then and now, I learned that it is completely acceptable to say "None of your business!" Deciding to be honest does not mean that everyone gets to know everything about you. Something that is important in there, however, is getting rid of shame. Shame is useful if you are doing something wrong and should change it, but so often we feel it for things that don't really matter, and can't be changed, and then it's destructive.

Her bugging me shouldn't have bugged me. I didn't care about clothes. I was fine with what I wore, and I didn't really think about where I shopped until she brought it up, but I let that make me feel like something less. It's such an arbitrary thing to base your value on what animal you have stitched on your shirt. At some point it became a liberating thing to be okay with not caring. I was not confident enough as an 11 year old to say "So?", but it would have been good for me.

Actually, now I am remembering something else that was not strictly honest. It was in junior high, and another girl, an older one, started bugging me about some way in which I was unattractive. It was probably my weight, but I don't remember, and the reason it didn't sear itself into my soul is because I stood up to her.

Usually I think of this story as an example of how I only internalized the things I pretended to ignore, but technically honesty does play a role. What I said was "I wouldn't talk with that face," which I think I was using to imply that she looked stupid, not that she looked ugly, but either way, that was not true. She would be considered more attractive than me, certainly. However, she took what I said really personally, despite it only being a probably inaccurate response to something she started. If her friend had not pulled her away, it looked like hitting would have followed.

I feel a certain amount of pride in this, even though my behavior was not admirable, because I had found some confidence. I knew I could take her, and I wasn't going to take it from her. Asserting yourself is valuable, and it is one step in being true to yourself.

I may have come by my honesty accidentally, but if I seem a little obsessed with it now, that is not me neurotically protecting myself from guilt, that is learning how valuable honesty is.

Because I have not been comfortable lying, I give my opinions honestly. That asserts that my thoughts and feelings have value; they are not something to be disregarded.

Because I am not comfortable lying, my speech is straightforward. Often when people use words wrong, they are trying to make something sound fancier, when it doesn't even need it (especially with "infer"). Of course, I do get really irritated with people who ask "Only fine?" "Only okay?" Fine is positive, and there are many people who would love to be fine but aren't. Deal with it.

I bring up kind a lot too, but kindness and honesty go together. Most of the people who are being really cruel or at least dismissive of others, are ignoring facts, or twisting them. When you really look at the world, and at people, there is a lot of room for compassion.  

Perhaps the most important aspect for me is that there is nothing left to be afraid of. The blog has been good for that. I am writing about things to work out my thoughts and understand them, but at the same time I am sharing them. There are a lot of things that hurt me when they were locked inside. Out there, you discover there's nothing that can't be faced.