Honesty That Transcends Boundaries

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

"Being completely honest is not the most diplomatic and safest method of communicating with emotional beings."

quote from the movie "Interstellar".

One of the main virtues that parents are trying to instill in us from childhood is honesty (including truthfulness, adherence to principles, loyalty to the obligations assumed, subjective conviction in the rightness of the case being carried out, sincerity in front of others and ourselves, recognition and observance of the rights of other people to what legally belongs to them, etc.).

Perhaps the most important source of honesty for a person is, first of all, sincerity with oneself: the ability to admit to oneself in one's mistakes, not to deceive and not justify oneself, the habit of evaluating one's actions and actions by the same measure as the actions of other people, the ability to take take responsibility and be congruent (when you realize and accept the feelings you are experiencing, you can name them and express them in behavior in a way that is not traumatic for others).

Being honest with yourself is when inner content, feelings, thoughts and words are combined together and do not contradict each other. This is the ability to admit to oneself not only of positive qualities, but also of one's own envy, greed, cowardice, meanness and other hard-hitting things that you absolutely do not want to know about.

However, many of us were taught to be honest only with others, and not with ourselves, elevating honesty to the rank of the most important virtue, forgetting that it should be carefully combined with delicacy, tact, politeness, tolerance and benevolence. Not considering that the perception of the truth of one person can be radically different from the truth of another.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Frederick Bartlett invited his students to copy one drawing and reproduce it from memory several times at different intervals. All the students' drawings turned out to be different, because the more time passes, the more our memory differs from reality.

Such variability of memory allows a person to change the idea of the past, even about childhood, because by describing to adults the false events of their childhood, you can activate their memories of it.

Therefore, when a person begins a phrase with the words "in fact", emphasizing that he is the only owner of the truth, his words may be radically different from reality.

It often happens that a person puts "absolute honesty" above human relations, without thinking about the pain that he can cause to other people. That many people prefer not to know any truth, because without it it is much safer to live; that the truth can become a shock trauma that will last like a red thread throughout your life.

Truth can grossly violate the boundaries of another person, turning into justified cruelty. It often begins with the words: "I am an honest and truthful person, therefore I will tell everything as it is," "I will tell you everything directly," "No one will tell you the whole truth, except me." It causes irritation, anger, resentment, shame, fear, guilt and makes you wonder why, in fact, a person needed to say this. So, telling your wife about your mistress is “caring,” a desire to divulge the truth, or a selfish desire to hurt and see her reaction? Exclaim: "Well, you got fat!" - is it an attempt to "motivate", a statement of fact or a desire to assert itself at someone else's expense? To say: “Just don’t be offended, but I will honestly tell you what I think of you” - is it a hidden aggression or a desire to help “open your eyes”?

After all, a person who inflicts pain, hiding behind sincerity, may seem to those who carry out a noble mission, a kind of “surgeon” (“I wish you only well,” “it is better to cut off once than to chop the tail piece by piece”). Just find out from the other how it will be better for him, for some reason the desire does not arise. At this moment, a person seems to feel his omnipotence and the full right to do whatever he sees fit with the other.

People who violate the boundaries of another with their honesty pursue exclusively their own goals: to relieve themselves of responsibility; relieve the soul with confession, not thinking about whether another person needs to hear it; condemn, devalue, subject to fair criticism, etc. Without even thinking about the fact that out of respect for the feelings of another person, in some situation, you can remain silent or soften the answer to his question, using the unspoken rule "first kindness, and only then honesty."

Forgetting that sincerity is not only the ability to truthfully answer direct questions, but also the ability not to answer when they are not asked (to be without opinion when the environment does not require it).

Perhaps sometimes you should ask yourself: "For what purpose do I want to tell the truth so badly now and will it be useful for a person?" After all, another, at least, can ask the question: "Why did you tell me this ???" and will be absolutely right.

But by relying on sincerity to yourself and consideration for the boundaries of others, you can find a good form for expressing honesty and a delicately fine line separating truth from cruelty.