Friday, October 17, 2008

Brutal honesty & wysiwyg

Funny to me how we describe things sometimes. I've caught myself using the term brutal honesty several times recently. Is there a gentle honesty? I think I will ask for that next time instead. Wouldn't we get the same answer? If it is honest, there aren't any shades to it, but that is the catch. We have warped things like honesty. We have degrees of honesty to fit our situation. Likewise, we make "white" lies okay, but not other kinds of lies. Seriously, why? We shade it so that it doesn't sound as bad or try to make it sound like something it isn't. We can rationalize a "white" lie because it doesn't hurt anyone. Really? We say we are just being totally honest. Is there another kind of honest? One where we hide part of the answer? Is that honesty? Bottom line to me is we go out of our way to make ourselves feel better. (I do realize that sometimes it is just the language we use, but still we need to be careful what we are communicating.) Wouldn't we be better if we just simply were honest and didn't lie? No shades of gray, pretty straighforward when you think about it. Which leads me to wysiwyg - what you see is what you get. Know any people like that? People who are the real deal. So transparent that sometimes it hurts being around them. We want to play the games and make things sound better. Wysiwig people break through that. That is what I want to be like. No guessing what shade of the story you are getting from me. So transparent that my friends don't have to guess what I am saying. What do you think? Can people, or better yet can you, live that way? An experiment worth pursuing for me. Let me know what you think. Come on, be brutally honest.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If one of your boys asked how they did at a soccer game in which they played bad, would "you really stunk it up" be brutally honest and "It wasn't your best game" be gently honest.
I think gentle honesty is best, but I realize that it's often a short step to dishonesty - and I've made that step before.
I think we get trained to do this when people respond poorly or defensively to honesty.