Honesty

If you asked most people is honesty important to them, unless I’m completely delusional, I assume most people would say yes, they might even go as far to say honesty is one of their top values. Everyone likes to think they are honest, and everyone likes to suggest they want honesty in return from others, but when we really look at Western Society, honesty is neither wanted, nor requested, nor given.

You look at the media and the majority of our media outlets are funded by someone pushing an agenda, pushing a certain image. You look at the fashion industry and its pushing these images of men and women that are so unattainable that even the model, on the front of whatever magazine, doesn’t recognized themself, because they’ve altered to the nth degree the reality of what they look like. You look at our leaders promising all these changes that they can’t bring about, making up stories or skewing stories against their opponents to depict them in a certain light, simply so they can lead the country to what they think is a better tomorrow. Even our food industry, our supermarkets pack the shelves with these perfect versions of fruit and veg that represent about 10% of what is actually grown, and the rest rejected for use elsewhere or left to rot. Then in this new age there is the lovely social media we all have to be on to keep up with our friends…. or maybe just acquaintances…. or even maybe that one random person that you met that one time you were out drinking, and you became best friends for the night.

How many movies are there depicting the dooms day where we have a world government and it’s a crime to speak or think for yourself? How afraid are we of what happened in the holocaust, we say never again? We are so scared of letting our freedom go, and not being able to speak for ourselves, and yet what we fail to realise is we are already there. We don’t speak our minds. We don’t say what we think. Especially even less now days as having an opinion seems to be taken like a personal attack towards people who don’t agree with you. If I sit here and say I think the new wave feminist movement is actually anti-males, then I’m speaking out against women and suggesting that they don’t have hardship, that in fact they have it easy, and it’s actually males who have it hard. I’m personally offending every woman out there who has been sexually assaulted, who never gets that CEO position because they are a women, who gets scared walking by themselves when there are a group of males across the street. Simply by saying what I think, simply by being honest, I have somehow offended more women in the world than I can count, when in reality in my mind I’m not trying to offend all these women, I’m not downgrading their pain or what they’ve been through, I’m simply stating that in my opinion everyone, despite gender, despite sexual orientation, despite race, despite religion all have it shit. We all have those things in life that are shit for us but we all also have certain areas that are a benefit and to sit there and pretend like one gender has it all and the other gender has nothing I think is wrong, and this is why we aren’t honest. This is why we choose the lies because we are condemned if we choose the truth. Whether its by police, by government, by our family, by our friends, by our work place, we are punished for honesty, so we will continue to pretend like the invisible handcuffs that control our words and thoughts aren’t there and that we are free.

In this world we live in where is the honesty? Is there any left? I know we all like to think we are the exception, and to be honest even I have thought often “I am the exception”, “honesty is my highest value” but even I lie. I lie to my clients letting them believe that this experience they have with me is real, that I feel the way they are feeling, that they are satisfying me like no other man has. I lie to my family, not telling a few of them about my job, not telling them that a lot of the things they think I just totally disagree with. I lie to my friends pretending I’m okay when I’m not, keeping my mouth shut when they make statements that I totally disagree with, giving my very brightened, beautiful, censored version of my opinion when they ask what I think about what they want to do or their past actions. But most of all I lie to myself. I pretend like I have it together and I know what I’m doing, where to be honest the majority of the time I have no idea what the f**k I’m doing. I pretend like I believe tomorrow will be a better day, that focusing on the positives will turn this world into a better place. I convince myself I’m okay, so I can get through the day helping other people but never really helping myself. I pretend I’m not an angry person when in reality I think its quite plausible that I just have so much anger trapped and hidden so well down inside myself I don’t even know what anger looks like anymore.

So why when we are all so dishonest do we demand the truth? Why when there is so much deception do we believe word for word what people say is the truth? Why do we get so offended when we find out we’ve been lied to when everything around us is a lie? Do we enjoy living in deception but feel we need to pretend to be accepted? Is pretending to be honest the greatest irony of them all? I can’t help but wonder if those moments of pure darkness and depression, and overwhelming feeling of despair are the only moments of actual honesty… the only moments when we see the world, ourselves, the future and other humans for what they really are. Or are the moments when you wake up so joyful and full of energy and can see all the wonder in the world, are those the moments that are moments of true honesty? Which moments are the true ones? Which moments are the real ones? Where is the honesty?