The Honest Truth

The saying goes that honesty is the best policy. A policy that one breaks as a young kid, into a teenager, and up into his or her adult years. We've all lied at some point in our lives, whether it be to our parents, teacher or professor, friends, family, significant others, and spouses. A person can't deny the fact that lying is wrong, but one can't really help it. In a way it's oftentimes a matter of sparing someone's feelings, but in retrospect, it's basically part of human nature. A defense mechanism in which one is backed into somewhat of a corner, that person avoids the truth, whatever it may be.

If you observe little kids, they speak the truth whether or not people want to hear it or not. It's just their nature, there is no filter for what the mouth is about to say before the brain is trying to stop him or her from saying it. It can be an embarrassing moment when these kids speak the truth when the time is not right. They speak their minds even though they don't know what they are talking about half the time. It's often fun for us counselors to interrogate kids into telling the truth by means of reverse psychology or by not doing anything at all. They will usually mess it up for themselves and the punishments will be swift, but fair.

Jack Nickolson said in the movie, A Few Good Men, ~You want the truth, You can't handle the truth!~ It's personally one of my most favorite movie lines of all time and it is somewhat related to being an honest person. Each one of us at some point and time had to face the truth concerning our lives either professionally or personally. A person has to sometimes face facts and accept the truth even though we may not like it. It can be somewhat of any eye-opening experience when the reality of what has happened slaps you in the face so to speak. Sometimes, a person has to face the truth even though it may hurt or sting.

The saying goes that the truth shall set you free. Have you ever felt guilty lying to someone and did you ever give it a second thought about lying to him or her afterwards? The lies that a person tells can overlap each other until one can no longer distinguish which is fact or fiction. The lies that one tells will come back and haunt a person so to speak and no amount of great acting will help him or her out of that situation. In a way, those lies one tells can be a proverbial weight on his or her shoulders that will be dragged around his or her entire life. It's just a matter of telling the truth and one won't have to carry that heavy burden in the long run.

If you think about it, it's that way with significant and potential relationships as well. You have to be honest with yourself and to the person you care about if you want that relationship to succeed. A relationship built on lie after lie will simply fall apart and who really wants a relationship built on that? Working with mostly women in the past 5 years has given me a little insight being that I've been dragged into many conversations about why guys are morons. In any case, the number one quality that women want in a relationship, more so than guys is honesty. If both men and women have that, then a stronger bond will be formed and that my friend is the honest truth.