The Lightness of Honesty

All too often we believe that a child learns by our manipulation of reality rather than by our example. Most of us instruct our young on the value of honesty while our conduct portrays the opposite. We often find comfort in the assumption children do not understand the contradiction but they do. Thus, from the very beginning, many of us have a confused relationship with honesty that grows larger with use.

Honesty is natural, it is openness, while dishonesty is fear based, and it is secretive. Truthfulness reveals who we are rather than who we wish to appear to be. If we are not comfortable with who we are it is wiser to change our behavior rather than the way we are perceived. Yet, deceit, on so many levels, has become so natural to many of us that it is habitual. Dishonesty is a burden; it is a weight upon an aspiring soul. In our quest we can only rise so high under the weight of duplicity. As a result we are stunted becoming more dependent upon deceit to manipulate the world around us.

If we so choose, we can become honest in all things but we must first be aware that for many of us dishonesty has become an almost automatic response. We can become open and free from the fear that sponsors dishonesty but only one act at a time, until truthfulness becomes our habitual response. Then, an aspiring soul can soar like an eagle, unencumbered by the weight of fear and deceit.

Openness and honesty are the natural states in which we find ourselves. It does not diminish us that we have not always behaved in a manner consistent with truthfulness but it does not help us if we continue to choose to bend under the weight of fear.  Choice is ours; we can choose the lightness of honesty or the heaviness of deceit. When we reason “we had no other choice,” we should remember choice is all we really ever had. Let us each choose the lightness of honesty, the naturalness of openness, and the soul satisfying joy of being exactly who we are. If we so choose lightness let us do so one act at a time, and we will indeed soar far above the fears of the day.