The greatest truth is honesty, and the greatest falsehood is dishonesty.
-- Abu Bakr
"It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty
and how few by deceit."
--Noel Coward
Supporting the perspective of honesty as putting truth into action, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe related, “Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.” As applied to the concepts of truth and honesty, Spencer Johnson noted, “Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.”
The person who acknowledges honesty as a core value understands how fundamental honesty is to their definition of "self." It is as much a part of who they are as is any part of their corporal being. It defines who and what they are in all aspects of their lives. The late Mary Kay Ash said of honesty, “Honesty is the cornerstone of all success, without which confidence and ability to perform shall cease to exist.” Similarly, success guru Zig Ziglar observed, "The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty."
One of the fruits of honesty is confidence, both in one's self, and in others' ability to be honest. Franklin D. Roosevelt concluded, "Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live." As tied to personal integrity, Michel de Montaigne wrote, "Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity." Having confidence in another's honesty is no small challenge, but if we are unable to do so, then how can we believe in such values as trust and truth? Nathaniel Hawthorne suggested, "All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse." Our core values must not be treated as step-children. Rather, for any of them to hold meaning, they must be embraced as the sacred offspring of our soul and spirit. If having and honoring core values is considered optional, how can we justify our existence on earth, or our worth in terms of contribution to the human race?
What stands in the way of honesty? What are we afraid of when we choose to not tell the truth, or lie, rather than to express the truth honestly? Perhaps part of the problem rests in what O. Henry wrote a century ago in Rolling Stones, "There is no well-defined boundary between honesty and dishonesty. The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and sometimes in the other." As great as one's fear of being honest might be, the alternative would seem even worse. Tad Williams proposed, “We tell lies when we are afraid …afraid of what we don't know, of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.” Thomas Paine, writing in The Age of Reason, observed, "It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime."
Expanding beyond the boundaries of "self," what is the impact of one's honesty, or dishonesty, on the relationships the person has with others? Ralph Waldo Emerson believed the highest compact a person can make with another human being is, "Let there be truth between us two forevermore." Each party in a relationship must come to it with their own yardstick, or set of scales, to determine its worth. An unknown author noted, "Some people will not tolerate such emotional honesty in communication. They would rather defend their dishonesty on the grounds that it might hurt others. Therefore, having rationalized their phoniness into nobility, they settle for superficial relationships."
It doesn't take much insight to realize that without honesty in our relationships, there is little, to no, chance for intimacy to exist, or flourish. As Ray Blanton notes, "Honesty does not always bring a response of love, but it is absolutely essential to it." If intimacy is what the person is seeking in a particular relationship, then the words of Goethe might have meaning. He stated, “What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.” Although Charles Dickens would likely disagree, Paulo Coelho felt, "No one can lie; no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone's eyes.” The eyes, as the windows of our soul, are revealing in many ways of their owner. However, one must remember, to look directly into someone's eyes allows the other person to do likewise. As adults we often ask, or demand, a child to "look us in the eye." Remember; when we do so, we may well be opening up a part of us to the child that we might not truly wish to reveal to him, or her. Proceed cautiously, and honestly. As author Richard Bach wrote, "Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully."
"It is not difficult to deceive the first time,
for the deceived possesses no antibodies;
unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness,
accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest
patching to repair great rents in the quotidian."
~John Updike
The debt of being other than honest can be realized as something even greater; something more universal. Rospo Pallenberg and John Boorman wrote in Excalibur, "When a man lies, he murders some part of the world." Again, buy-in to this perspective is the option of the individual, but, at the very least, it should cause one to pause and reflect for a moment or two about the damage, or possible damage, that s/he may have wreaked if dishonesty was selected in lieu of honesty. It is interesting that the concept of "brutal honesty" has been allowed to become accepted by many as a quality of honesty; one that is best avoided unless we choose to use it as a weapon against another. Certainly, an individual may choose to present some element of truth in such a way to do harm to another. As Bertrand Russell noted, "If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships." The writer chooses to believe that far more friendships are formed, maintained, and, even, salvaged as a result of honesty between individuals than have been damaged or destroyed. Lest we get too Pollyannaish about people's intentions as applied to the use of honesty, we might consider the words of Dave Van Ronk, “Honesty is the cruelest game of all, because not only can you hurt someone - and hurt them to the bone - you can feel self-righteous about it at the same time.” Honesty, much like the scalpel, can heal, or can do serious harm, or even kill a person based on the intention of the one who wields it.
Let's take a closer look at how the core value of honesty plays in our interaction and relationship with children. Interestingly, Oliver Wendell Homes wrote, "Pretty much all the honest truth telling in the world is done by children." In a similar fashion Mira Nair shared, "I always like to reveal the fact that the emperor has no clothes. And children are best at that. They teach us how to see the world in that sense. They are without artifice; they see it for what it is. I am drawn to that ruthless honesty." But, didn't we all start out as children? Then what happened that allowed dishonesty to overcome the child's propensity toward honesty?
One plausible response might be that the children have all too well learned the ways of many adults in their life's sphere. If the reader accepts this as an acceptable possibility, then as adults we are obligated to prepare children to become honest individuals. Jose Marti suggests, "A child, from the time he can think, should think about all he sees, should suffer for all who cannot live with honesty, should work so that all men can be honest, and should be honest himself." For those of us who advocate for children this suggestion makes good sense. After all, as John Ruskin penned, "To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education." Plutarch was aware of the close connection between a child's formal and informal learning, and the inculcating of the value of honesty into an individual's life. He was quoted as saying, "The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education." Centuries later Thomas Jefferson would write, "Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom."
Therein lies a major challenge to the adult members of our society; making the world honest. The challenge is finding the redeeming value in, and of, honesty. A society fixated on tangible values often finds difficulty in understanding and accepting the inherent value of what it considers intangible. Josh Billings suggests. "Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain't lawful tender for a loaf of bread." For honesty to claim its true and ultimate value, we have to see it as something far greater than coinage. William Shakespeare may have been writing to this very line of reasoning when he wrote, “No legacy is so rich as honesty.” After all, even for those whose religion has as its missal an accountant's balance ledger, and its hymnal the stock market report, leaving a legacy is important. And as Kate Hudson reminds us, "Honesty will never break you."
"Almost any difficulty will move in the face of honesty.
When I am honest I never feel stupid.
And when I am honest I am automatically humble."
--Hugh Prather
"Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up."
--George Saunders
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