It’s difficult to maintain a conversation with just about anyone this time of year without falling into a conversation about New Years resolutions. Whether their goal is to lose weight or quit smoking, folks love to share their hopes for the New Year
Recently, a friend of mine decided he’s going to be more honest with people. It sounds like a perfectly reasonable goal, but how possible is it? There are paradoxical clichés a plenty on the subject. On one hand, we have your grandmother saying honesty is the best policy and on the other hand we have your cynical friends telling you the truth hurts. Most people would argue that both are true. How can this be?
How can something that hurts people be the best option? Most social people would like to avoid hurting other people because, to throw in another old phrase, we were taught if we don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. How can we place equal value on being nice and being honest? How can we be both and continue to stand up for ourselves? It is this paradox that has all the nice people of the world lying to everyone they meet and all the honest people being written off as unkind.
As much lip service as we give honesty, you’d think we’d reward people for being truthful, but the fact of the matter is we don’t.
Say your aunt gave you yet another hideous sweater for your birthday. The first year she did it, your mother saw that you hated it and warned you with her eerie Mom telepathy that you’d better not say what’s on your mind. You knew full well she meant business and that to defy her was to instigate a major family incident, so you lied. You told your aunt you loved it and made a point of wearing it when you knew you’d be seeing her. Since that first time, you’ve gotten similar horrible sweaters ever since and lied every year, digging yourself deeper into this pit of little white lies and getting buried alive in consecutively uglier sweaters.
In this hypothetical situation, your mother made it very clear that honesty was not, in fact, the best policy.
Not only is honesty often not rewarded, we aren’t taught how to handle it. This is what makes the movie Liar, Liar, in which a man is unable to lie for an entire day, so interesting. Throughout the film, he not only answers questions honestly, but he volunteers true information that most people would have withheld. This gets him thrown in jail, not to mention almost ruins nearly all his personal and professional relationships. It really speaks to our inability to deal with this honesty we keep insisting we want.
We lie for a variety of reasons. Many lies that are told are told for the purpose of sparing feelings. Sometimes, though, it’s just easier to lie.
I don’t know if my friend will stick to his resolution to be more honest with people. I just hope it doesn’t do more harm than good.