Honesty….

Why does honesty feel more like it’s kept locked behind a steel door than simply a way we all do life?

I am deeply entrenched in the throws of a radical journey that has possibly been the most challenging road I will ever travel in this messy society in which I live. Messy because we are all flawed humans with our own minds and ways that we see and choose to interact with the world. Messy because we are all trying to communicate in a foreign language. Why foreign?? Because we communicate from the language developed within our unique selves, it is our personal language, formed through our own trials and challenges and our own truths as we know them to be. We are really unaware that no one knows our soul story well enough to know the little nuances the make our language us. The idiosyncrasies within change how symbols are seen and understood by each individual person.

So how does one know if the world and the people around them are honest?? There is no real black and white answer to that question. Two people may be in the exact same incident yet experience two distinctly different things thereby, each one has their own truth as they know it to be. Both people authentically experience according to their own processing of symbols developed by their own personal previous experience. For me, it comes down to authenticity and trust. Is a person different around different people? Do they say one thing to me and something different to someone else? Do their words and actions line up? Do I trust them to be who they say they are? Do their children trust them to be who they say they are?

Some days I feel as though my messy storm is passing, however, I am now realizing that messy never goes away. Accepting that life is messy allows me to navigate the deep waters I used to be afraid of. Even the lens through which I view my childhood experiences has shifted. Some things, like events and details, matter less while other things, like instinctive thoughts and behaviours, now matter more. My core values that developed during those traumatic childhood days are screaming to rise up and speak. It is time to stop accepting excuses for the lies being told around me, it is time to stop turning a blind eye to injustice, it is time to expect integrity from those who I spend time with as I know they too expect honesty from me. I am frankly over-done with masks, false personas, and lies. I am over-done with the excuses for lying, whether the lie is white (whatever that means) or justifiable (is that real?). I really just desire authentic honesty. I know first hand that the truth is not usually easy and that each person has their own unique experience of the truth, however, this does not negate the fundamental role of honesty in our day to day existence.

I am learning that the aftermath of complex childhood trauma is likened to a hurricane that regularly rips through my life and demands I take stock of who I am. I need to remain in a place of being willing to constantly re-evaluate my world including my choices, my attitudes and instinctive behaviours, and those who I have permitted to be in relationship with me. Honesty, integrity, and justice have always been resident within me, but lately, these character traits have stormed to the forefront as the primary tools I have come to employ in this re-evaluation process.

I grew up in a world chocked full of lies. My father was as dishonest as the sea is deep. He claimed to be a man that he was not. He was a destroyer of minds, hearts, and souls. I was witness to how destructive it was to withhold the truth. The harder he tried to be who he was not, the more dangerous he became. To grow up never being able to trust the people who are meant to protect you, teach you, guide you, and love you is a training ground that is as unstable as quicksand in an earthquake.

Is it impossible to see what spineless lying does to those around us? Is it impossible to see how emotional and spiritually destructive it is to live in a world of masks, facades, and spineless lies? Do we not realize what message we send to those who trust us to be honest with them? Why do we choose to turn a blind eye and justify injustice? Desmond Tutu said it the simplest way, “If you choose to be neutral in a situation of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Injustice is oppressive. When we are dishonest to serve ourselves, we are unjust. In the story of Golda Mier, her dishonesty was meant to spare the lives of others. During the Rwandan genocide, lies were told to spare lives. Do we justify our dishonesty because we are trying to spare lives from certain death OR with the excuse of sparing the pain of truth just so we can live the way we want? This question is deeply personal, yet it must be asked from a place within that requires authenticity of heart and soul.

I have longed for a tribe of companions that choose authenticity over simply looking and sounding good. People have come…. and gone… and few remain…. but the few who remain are the solid in a sinking society. They are rocks that stand the test and continue to stand as they are continually tested. Oh, we all know how hard it is to be authentic in a fake world, we have all paid a price to be real, we do not hide and we wear our hearts on our sleeves. It means we risk being shunned, hurt, and rejected…. but still…. we rise and we stand.

I have heard it said,”If you do not stand for something then you will fall for anything.” This is so very true of standing for truth because; those who do not stand for truth fall deeply into a false world constructed of lies.