Honesty is such a lonely word, turns out Billy Joel wasn’t kidding. Like most things, that can be taken several ways depending on your personal narrative, and I believe the majority of that song is about honesty in intimate relationships. But it is so relatable to every relationship we experience in life.
Personally, I’ve come to understand at this point in my existence, after decades of working and dealing with people from all walks of life, that everyone has their own version of honesty and the truth. And you can never argue with someone’s truth, at best you can hope to be compassionate of other people’s realities. At worst you appear intolerant and tone-deaf.
Also, people can’t be any more honest with you than they are with themselves. And a lot of people are not very honest with themselves. Sure, they talk a big game, and they seem to genuinely believe it when they speak it, but when the rubber meets the road, it becomes apparent that they were not being truthful.
People will also make up details that fit their narrative while they are telling it, often even while the previous version is still fresh in your ears.
I can’t help but wonder if the rise of gaslighting is because people don’t want to be seen as liars, but when people around them point out their lies or attempt to hold them accountable to those lies, they will do anything to not admit to the lie, and not apologize or attempt to make it right, and then they make the person who points out the discrepancy wrong. And the louder, more viciously, and more arrogantly the better apparently.
What happened to being ashamed of yourself when you were caught lying? Have we arrived at a point in time where everyone are complete narcissists in their day-to-day dealings with other people?
A couple of instances stand out in my own recent memory where someone lied to me, then, after I discovered that was not how things actually happened, and I called them out on it, (although not even called them out, which sounds so severe, more like asked about the discrepancy) had them throw a full-blown adult temper tantrum, complete with name calling and ranting and yelling and huffing and puffing as if they could intimidate the realization out of my mind I guess, which on both occasions I walked away from.
Previously in life, I would be shocked and wounded, but one of the joys of living longer is realizing not everyone’s lack of emotional control is my fault. In fact, nobody’s lack of control is my fault. At all. Their behavior is on them. Not me.
It’s funny because I never really know what they expect the outcome of such a meltdown would be. Am I supposed to apologize to them for asking them about things that they are responsible for that don’t line up? Succumb to their obvious dominance in tantrum throwing? I don’t get it.
Then, even weirder, later (one time days, the other time months) the people contacted me to say they needed to apologize, and that they would call me or come by (once was within a work situation) to do so. Which was confusing, why wouldn’t you just apologize then? Why would a person feel they have to announce their intention to apologize? It’s like when people announce they have a question, instead of just asking the question.
Obviously, I never saw or heard from them again. People are weird.
But it wasn’t just random. The more you look around the more you see lying becoming the norm. It’s hard to raise your kid to be honest, when people are lying around and to them all the time. Yes, I know they are good teaching moments. And it has been because of these “teaching moments” that I became aware of the discrepancies between the world we create at home and the one “out there.”
These days people in the public eye, especially public servants (because remember that is what politicians actually are…public servants), will lie continually, changing their opinion or views to fit a conversation. Even when confronted with footage of their own interview or things they have said to the opposite of what they are now saying, all they do is get angry and accusatory. As if being able to out-anger someone somehow makes it ok?
Then when you do have the rare politician who does not lie to the size and extent of the worst culprits, or is maybe even an honest person, the lying ones just make up slanderous B.S. and attack their character. And if they do not do it personally, they have all sorts of vaguely named shadow organizations they hide their money in, with names like “Americans for Justice” that do the dirty poop raking for them, with false studies and so-called “experts” to support their views. I personally do not vote for anyone whose whole platform is just slandering another person, the outlandish viewpoints they push about how terrible their opponents are is laughable.
Most recently, here in the south of the good ole US of A, a middle-aged white man was defending his seat against a middle-aged black woman, and the ads supporting the white guy were full of ridiculous accusations like this woman apparently single-handedly raised all taxes for hard-working (white) families. And personally hired an IRS army to tax everyone more. After seeing these ads for the first time and laughing my head off, I realized with horror that this was their actual tactic. As if we were all stupid enough to believe a single black woman in the south had the power to raise taxes and restructure the IRS. Oh pluuueeeeze.
I think that the quality of our relationships with ourselves and others, and the faith a country has in its leaders and media is really only built on trust and honesty. If those traits are not modeled anywhere, and if you do not have those things on your own radar, life is pretty superficial and reactionary.
Let’s face it, we all want to believe in someone, right? We want to know that they are honest and have integrity. And, in the long run, we need more than just to be told that they are those things.
As we’ve seen in recent years one can spend all the time in the world on social media telling people how fantastic they are, and they may seduce some people into aligning with them from a shared hate, but eventually, their crappy actions will betray them. There is nothing to them. The emperor is wearing no clothes.
However, all it’s really seemed to do is make behaving that way acceptable. Why is it that when left unchecked people’s moral response is to act like entitled douchebags?
What’s interesting though, is that everyone expects others to be honest and act with integrity, but they don’t do it themselves. Much like the children’s story of the little red hen, nobody wants to help the little red hen work to grow the grain or harvest it but everyone wants the freshly baked bread.
It’s like the very fabric of agreed-upon societal behavior is unraveling, and all anybody is doing is pointing fingers and throwing insults at each other.
Expecting behavior they are not willing to demonstrate, which begs the question of who is supposed to be honest first?
The people pointing out the people that are not being honest? Or the people being called out for their dishonesty?
It’s the age-old question, which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
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