How Can I Be Honest All The Time?
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In an interesting poll from last week, 62% of people (as of today) believe that they cannot be honest 100% of the time. I find that completely fascinating. I asked the question in regards to an article I read and shared on my blog that talked about an angel investor who said he believed the secret to success was honesty. Peter said, “Complete honesty is the access to ultimate power.”
I see people struggle to be honest many times, and I know they aren’t lying to be mean or malicious. They simply want to be polite, but is a “lie” really kind and polite?
I therefore ask you, my readers, what do you feel you cannot be honest about?
Would you be willing to share with me examples where you feel you cannot be honest in your personal or professional life?
Honesty doesn’t always mean laying your feelings on the table or saying something ugly. You can always focus on the positive truth to any situation, making it known what you truly think, without lying. And you can be polite about it, too.
If you missed this article last week, its definitely worth a read, if you ask me.
I’ve always found this topic fascinating too. It seems like sometimes when people think about honesty, they can get conflicted because they think it means the same thing as not having a filter. That isn’t true. If you ask me a question and I don’t want to give you the answer, I can either lie OR I can say, “I don’t want to answer that question”, or “that’s a private matter”, or similar and that would be 100% honest. Being totally honest doesn’t mean you have to bear your soul to someone you don’t want to bear it to. You can literally just tell them you don’t want to, and do it without lying to anyone.
Hey Keith, good to see your comments again! I totally agree that a person does not have to disclose everything – there are ways to say “I don’t wish to share that”, and still be totally honest.
I’m surprised the 62% number is that low. My sense is that many more people would have trouble being 100% honest. As far as the question Eyes asked, (what do you feel you cannot be honest about?) I can’t think of a topic that I would need to lie about.
Keep in mind there may be rare special instance where lying is the best policy, but they are extremely rare – I’ve virtually never come across them in real life. For example, if a person came in to a place and asked where Russ is (that’s me) with the intent of doing serious bodily harm to me. Would you lie in that situation or tell the truth and point me out? IMHO that’s a situation where it’s best to lie. But those made up situations virtually never happen in real life.
Russ, I like your comment and Keith’s. I’ve thought of that before. If someone came up to me with a gun, and had just killed 3 other people for answering they were Christian, and then I was asked, I would think it would be ok to lie if it meant staying alive. I am religious, believe in God, and believe God would forgive that lie.
I think of the teacher in Sandy Hook. The gunmen came into her classroom, and asked her where the kids were. She said they were in PE. He left, not before shooting and killing the teacher. All of the kids were in the classroom, hiding in closets. To me, there is no question that to lie was the best thing to do.
I know these are extreme situations that likely will never happen to me. Very interesting topic.
Unfortunately the “I don’t wish to share that” line doesn’t work for a yes no question where only one of the options is inconvenient… Still an useful trick.
Actually, my response would be, “What am I being interrogated?” No one should ever make you feel obligated to respond in the adult world 🙂
You can also always ask a question with another question! Or focus on something positive, or redirect the conversation. All are honest to prevent having to say something you don’t want to say.
I think it can be hard to be honest in situations which involve a child asking their parent if they are good at something. For example, my son said he wanted to be an NBA player. As a mom, I want to encourage him to play ball, but realize that because of his size and ability (which is good, but not NBA good) that is probably not realistic. So he may say “Do you think I could make it to the NBA” and I say “well, I think anything is possible if you work hard, focus, etc”. Deep down I am thinking this is not going to happen, but I don’t want to crush his dreams. So am I lying by giving my “if you work hard” speech?
Also, women do this a lot when they say something like “do these jeans make my butt look big?”. I feel like these questions asked to a man are going to get a man in trouble if he says “yes honey, they really do.” Yet a girlfriend can answer this with another girlfriend and not get in trouble for being completely honest. You can say it’s a filter, or choosing not to answer, but by choosing not to answer, we are answering I think.
I try to be honest in my answers, but when my 7 year old son asked me if Santa was real, and I could see the hope in his eyes wanting to believe, I felt like a complete jerk when I told him he wasn’t real. To watch his face crumble, and then cry was of course temporary, but I can still see that image in my mind and I’m not sure I did the right thing. Could I have said “As long as you believe in Santa, he is real” and would that have been a lie, or satisfactory to his 7 year old question?
In business, being honest seemed much easier.
And sometimes I think we can get caught off guard with a question or a situation, and we blurt out a lie, or don’t answer and in my case, my facial expressions say it all. My sisters laugh because they say I can’t lie, because my face gives me away.
I don’t see you as lying saying “if you work hard enough” IF you truly believe that. If you don’t, then I think you are better telling him the truth. “It’s very, very tough to make the cut. Most people don’t make it so you have to be exceptionally good. Doing what you are doing now probably won’t get you there. If you really, really want to get there, we need to re-consider what it would take.” And then I would dig into what would be required, seek out some professional advice and be honest with him.
My mom was kind that way. She would tell me right away if I lacked appropriate skills. She didn’t discourage me either, but she told me I had a long, long way to go! And I needed that. Like I wanted to sing and couldn’t hold a note and she flat out told me I was way behind the 8 ball and didn’t have that “natural talent”. I didn’t dream needlessly. I had realistic expectations.
I’m reminded of a quote by Mark Twain that I like more and more over the years. “Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.” Having just looked it up for exactness, I somehow remembered it in the affirmative of, “Only tell the truth to those deserving of it.” I’m not sure which I like better, but I like the idea.
I’m honest. I don’t lie beyond occasional white lies, and I don’t often struggle with telling the truth. That’s not to say I haven’t lied of course, or even may in the future. When I have, it has caused stress, and including moral and ethical dilemmas, these are all enough reasons.
I had a coworker tell me recently that he was going to San Fransisco, when I had asked him if he was working on a particular day. When that day arrived and he was at work, I asked what happened with San Fransisco. He laughed, and called me a pendejo for believing him. He said he works every Friday (or whatever day it was), and that I should know that. That was his justification for “joking” with me. I was annoyed. I wouldn’t do that. I could, but why? To me it wasn’t a joke, it was a lie.
I do believe honesty is the best policy, but that’s also a generalization. I can understand situations where honesty may not be the best policy. Honesty in espionage and intelligence gathering will not always be helpful and can be counterproductive–even police investigations.
And of course there’s active and passive honesty/deception. I feel volunteering a lie is usually much different confirming a lie by silence.
In this venomous internet social medial climate that we now live in, I don’t know if “everyone” deserves the truth. For a majority of people, it doesn’t seem to matter.
I think most people are honest until they feel there’s a situation that calls for dishonesty. Where that line is drawn determines the character of that person.
What we’ve lost with the advent of technology is privacy. I used to think that with video cameras everywhere we were kept anonymous–anonymity through complete over saturation (too much information). Yet with identification of various forms required to access just about everything (How many basic websites can we sign up with by just using Facebook these days?), this as we’ve discovered (per Snowden) is not the case. Everything is collected and can be mined at a later, infinite date. Metadata can be more invasive than data.
My point being: We’ve lost anonymity.
If we don’t have anonymity, we risk having honest exchanges of thought and honest debate and ideas being presented.
The Federalist Papers promoting the ratification of The U.S. Constitution were written under the pseudonym Publius, by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. They needed anonymity, and we still do today.
Unfortunately, I am more guarded about what I share to the world because of my effort to maintain honesty. This is a problem.
Incidentally, I just registered for a very anonymous email address. I don’t know if I really have the need for it, but then, that’s not the point.
To answer your question as to whether there’s something that I feel I couldn’t/wouldn’t be honest about, I think one of them is “topics I couldn’t/wouldn’t be honest about”. I’m honest, but I’m just not going to volunteer it if it huts me in someway.
Speaking of which, I wish you had an anonymity choice on this blog. 😉
I often divert conversations onto other topics when I feel like I’m being interrogated. Usually I feel the people that are questioning me are off on the wrong track anyway and are just trying to make some point or confirm their assumptions.