Honesty is not always the best policy

I am an honest person. To put it more factually, I don’t mind being brutally honest. Frankly, I love to be very straightforward. However, experience, a book and a sitcom have changed my mind on this issue.

My experience has showed me time and again that honesty ends up hurting people and accepting facts is not what people are ready for. This, in turn, makes them blame you for anything and everything under the sun. They hardly (read never) have the guts to say so on your face but use your honesty as a weapon to hurt your loved ones. Then, though you may not regret your honesty despite this, you eventually become really lonely as you become surer than ever that people don’t understand you.

I love the book ‘The road less traveled’ by Scott M Peck. In it, there is a big chunk on withholding the truth. I admire that chunk and identify with it. Hence, every time, I am going to blurt out my version of reality, insight, epiphany, I bite my tongue and remind myself to withhold.

I am a fan of Sheldon Cooper from the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. In it, it is shown that he cannot keep a secret and is quite straightforward. He doesn’t understand sarcasm either. I am more or less the same. Oh Oh. I was. I learnt to keep secrets as a psychologist (doctor-patient confidentiality). As I mentioned earlier, I stopped being completely straightforward and learnt to withhold the truth. I do understand sarcasm every now and then, nowadays. I could do this thanks to this sitcom. In one of the episodes, Sheldon’s mother tells him how important it is to not point out certain things, even thought they were factual. Sheldon has ended up losing his job due to such rude honesty. Being really good at what he does, he gets his position back.

However, I understood something from this. People do not want to hear honest answers even when they start their questions with ‘tell me honestly’. They want it to be sugar-coated at the least. When you wrap reality in attractive masks, there is high chance that people will look at the masks and be happy with them. So, reality is lost. Without the flimsy coating reality is like painful yoga poses and bitter potions for immunity building. So, all in all, fans of reality remain at an all-time-low.

Despite adjusting my vocal and overt life to the social norms, customs and traditions as far as I can, my reality keeps itching my head. Hence, my honest outlet becomes these blog posts.

So, thank you for reading the three reasons that hold me back from being honest.