notemily:

aja:

I still tell plenty of lies every day, but by the end of the week I’ve slashed the total by at least 40 percent. Still, the giddiness is wearing off. A life of radical honesty is filled with a hundred confrontations every day. Small, but they’re relentless.

“Yes, I’ll come to your office, but I resent you for making me travel.”

“My boss said I should invite you to this meeting, although it wouldn’t have occurred to me to do so.”

“I have nothing else to say to you. I have run out of conversation.”

My wife tells me a story about switching operating systems on her computer. In the middle, I have to go help our son with something, then forget to come back.

“Do you want to hear the end of the story or not?” she asks.

“Well…is there a payoff?”

“Fuck you.”

I’m fascinated (and amused) by this article. While I don’t think I would try to be completely honest about everything, I have been finding value in being more honest about things I used to lie about.

My boyfriend gave me some chocolate he brought back from a recent trip, and I tried it, but didn’t like it—it tasted too much like milk chocolate, and I’m a deep-dark-bitter fan. My first impulse was to lie and say I liked it, but I think if I’d lied, I would end up resenting the fact that I had three bars of chocolate lying around that I didn’t want to eat, but now felt like I must because Duncan got them for me. And I’ve been trying to be honest with him as much as I can, because I believe relationships suffer when the people in them stop being their authentic selves. If I can’t be myself with him, then what’s the point?

So I said, “I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t like the chocolate.” And he was like, “more for me!”

While i do understand this, I have found that I’ve actually had to curb this type of ‘honesty’. It’s in my nature to be direct, blunt and plain, and many of my relationships that would have been otherwise pleasant have suffered because of it, and here, in my opinion is why: Honesty doesn’t necessarily require you to state your opinion about something.

You can be perfectly, authentically honest with someone without feeling the need to give voice to your internal, often unnecessarily judgmental, commentary. To omit that is not being dishonest, it’s just learning how to shut the fuck up occasionally.

For example, if someone presents me with a gift, I can say thank you and mean it, because I honestly appreciate the gesture, and say no more regardless of whether I like the gift or not. If they press me, asking repeatedly if I like it, I can choose at that point to offer a blunt opinion. Or not. If it’s a loved one, or a thick skinned friend, I’m more likely to do it. If it’s a coworker who meant well, but doesn’t know me all that intimately, I really don’t see a good reason for saying “no. it’s terrible. I don’t like it…but thanks for thinking of me.”

Lately it seems to me like people mistake honesty for arrogance. Honesty is not just blurting out how you feel when you feel like it, to whomever you feel like blurting it to. That’s just opinion, and often misplaced.

Also, sure, honesty’s ok, but I feel like lately everyone has been so intent on being their ‘authentic’ self that they fail to take anyone else into consideration. There is space in every type of relationship for consideration and personal authenticity, and the timing is often crucial (if you’ve had a rough go with your best bud, it’s probably not wise to chastise the gift she brought you out of a self righteous sense of radical honesty) but lately I feel like people are giving themselves the permission to be jerks in the name of self-discovery and I can’t get behind that. Like I mentioned, I’ve actually had to work on being less vociferous, not more, and I’ve found that although I have a natural disinclination towards lying or deception, sometimes saying thank you, and keeping your mouth shut is the kindest most authentic thing you can do.