A Surprisingly Sane Blog

Sometimes honesty isn’t always very nice.

I think that’s why a lot of people choose tell those chocolate-covered lies.  They’re the easy way out, and they appear and sound so much sweeter than the alternative.

But are they really?

Last night, I swore I was going to have a heart attack.  The pain started in my shoulder and radiated to my chest.  It hit suddenly, and I’ve never had that happen before.  It scared me.  What are the chances of a healthy, fit young female actually having a heart attack?  Slim.  Very slim, in fact.  But it’s possible.

I’m about 110% sure now that it was stress and anxiety related to an issue that probably could have been avoided had both parties just found a way to be honest in the first place.  However, years of avoiding the truth has made it difficult for these two particular people to work things out gracefully now that honesty has emerged for one of those people and not the other.  I try to stay out of the situation, but given the nature of it, I will always be somewhat affected by it.

We’ve all encountered people like this in our lives.  The ones who wear a fake smile and pretend that everything’s just peachy despite the transparent underlying tension that proves they’re just lying to themselves and everyone else.

I’ve seen too much of it, and I’ve built my own life based on the good, bad, and ugly of what reality truly is.

Perhaps I am too honest from time to time.  I rarely censor myself, and I am certain that I’ve pissed more than one person off by just telling them like it really is, but I have learned that honesty is the key.  It doesn’t come back to haunt you and bite you in the ass, even if it isn’t always pretty up front.

Does that mean I’m going to give my unsolicited opinion to whomever whenever I please?  No way.  I’m direct, not stupid.

But that does mean that if you ask me what I think, you’re going to have to prepare yourself for the truth, whatever that may be.

And while I contemplated calling a priest to pray over my failing heart in the middle of the night caused by the frustration of dealing with the kind of human being who would rather live in a created cardboard fantasy kingdom than face the truth, I had a moment of perspective today that left me thinking.

Yes, it would be easier to play this person’s little game, but what would that ever get me?  No satisfaction would come of it, and the problem would remain.

Today I spent some time with an equally honest friend of mine who wasn’t afraid to hear the truth.  So what if that honesty included a few things that weren’t exactly the purest-sounding thoughts ever?  My friend laughed and said I was like a devil on someone’s shoulder.  Verifying something that my friend already knew didn’t sound exactly… nice, but hell, I’d rather be the devil than play an angel with a fake smile.

Afterward, I realized that while the “honest” answer continues to always be the harder path up front, it’s generally downhill from there.  It’s the trail paved with fake ferns that leads one to no good.

And as for me, I don’t want to die from the stress of trying to fake it.  So if you try to put that smile on up front when you know it isn’t true, be prepared to know I’m going to call you on it.

Current Mood: Mischievous

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 4:08 pm and is filed under Daily Ramble. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.