“If I’m honest…”

What comes after these words for you lately?
What do we lie to ourselves about?
What do we simply rationalize and believe, which is not exactly lying, but still not exactly honest?
Why is honesty so difficult?

“I’m not stressed.”
When Son was leaving for college, I probably would have said I was not stressed. He was prepared, an independent kid for years already. Everything went smoothly, and I was excited for him to start that big life adventure. I remember feeling 舍不得, ‘hate to part with’. Oh yes, lots of that. But it was muted, maybe? Because it never overwhelmed me and I honestly felt fine. Looking back now, however, I realized only recently and suddenly (like a bolt of lightening hit me) that my stress manifested in at least two ways that I absolutely did not recognize, one of which I had already known was a typical stress response for me.
How fascinating! I wonder what people around me observed at the time? I need to ask.

I think the vast majority of us are very honest. We try hard to always tell the truth. I also think there are multiple levels of honesty. Deeper layers of honesty touch values, beliefs, circumstances, and relationships that get complex, and often involve paradox. I’m so happy for Son to be grown and flown, and I’m so sad that he’s leaving home. I advocate for or reject this ideal or position, and I also see the value of an opposing view. This relationship serves and fulfills me in this way, and absolutely does not in other ways.

Denial. We judge it, yes? We think of it as something we should be able to recognize, reverse, and control. And yet it’s a natural response to stress, a self-protective reaction to the severe discomfort of dissonance. We unconsciously deny what we cannot consciously tolerate.

I stay in this relationship because…
I stay in this job because…
I voted this way because…

We rationalize our feelings and honestly believe our rationalizations.

We need to get better at tolerating the discomfort of reality–the reality that our own values and beliefs may sometimes clash with themselves because life and human relations are incredibly complex. Context matters. We can honestly hold certain beliefs and values and necessarily apply them differently in various conditions. This does not make us hypocrites, necessarily. The risk to our integrity and thus our relationships lies in the unwillingness to get honest about our inconsistencies, to actively deny and disavow our apparently conflicting words and actions.

When others’ behaviors seem apparently self-conflicting, can we withhold judgment for a moment and make the more generous assumption that they, like we, are generally honest people? Can we put down the hypocrite label and get curious about why we all sometimes act in ways that appear to counter our professed values and beliefs?

If we all get a little more honest with ourselves, I think we will be a lot slower to judge others for their apparent lack of honesty. In the best cases, honesty makes us more curious, more understanding, more willing to connect.

I Hold Honesty for Us because it gives us space to consider things from different perspectives. Honesty makes us humble. Humility invites connection. We need all of these things now more than ever.