If I were to ask anybody, "How high do you rank honesty as a virtue? How important is honesty to you in a person?" Whether it's a business partner, an associate, a friend, a lover, family, whatever, most people are going to rank it pretty fucking high, if not at the top.
Because nobody likes a liar. Nobody likes someone who can't face the truth. Honesty is almost universally seen as something you've gotta have, plain and simple.
Where it becomes a potential issue is when people start citing honesty as part of their identity. "This is just me. I'm honest. I'm completely honest." Or the related, "Hey look, you asked me to be honest, so I was."
Cool. That's great.
To me, the fact that the phrase "to be honest" even exists is kind of telling. Apparently we need to announce when we're switching into truth mode? But anyway.
What I think we sometimes forget is that honesty doesn't protect you from the consequences of what you say.
It's similar to how people in America talk about the First Amendment. You're protected from the government punishing you simply for expressing an opinion. That doesn't mean you can say whatever the hell you want and nobody else gets to react to it.
Honesty works the same way.
If you decide you're going to be honest, awesome. I'm glad. If you describe yourself as "brutally honest," ok cool, I'm here for it. But understand that your honesty doesn't have to be met with whatever response you were hoping for. Your honesty can change someone's opinion of you. It can change the trajectory of a friendship, relationship, business arrangement, or anything else. It can make somebody reconsider something they wanted to do, or didn't want to do. And none of that necessarily means you shouldn't have been honest.
That's the other half of the bravery involved. If you're going to cite honesty as a virtue, you also have to be brave enough to accept what happens after you're honest.
Usually when somebody starts with, "Look, I'm just gonna be honest," we all know what's coming. They're probably about to say something contentious, critical, uncomfortable, maybe even insulting. At the very least, they're about to ruffle some feathers.
And sometimes they're completely fucking right.
There can still be consequences.
You can be dead-on, spot-on correct and another human being can still have a hostile response to what you said. That's part of human engagement. Your truthfulness and their reaction to it are two different things.
I'm obviously not advocating for being less honest. Quite the opposite. I'm advocating for understanding how this shit actually works.
If I'm honest, there may be repercussions. If I lie, there may be repercussions. Everything we do has potential consequences, good and bad. Honesty isn't some get-out-of-jail-free card where you get to say, "Well, what are you upset about? I was just being honest."
Aight. You were honest. And they're upset. Both things can be true.
The danger is when somebody starts learning the wrong lesson from that. "Shit, every time I'm honest about this, people get mad. Maybe I shouldn't be honest anymore."
That's not the lesson!
The lesson is that you have to accept both. You can't cite honesty as a virtue while refusing to accept what honesty sometimes costs you. And if you have trouble being honest because you're afraid of the repercussions, well, that's understandable. Humans aren't particularly great at receiving "brutal" honesty.
But honesty isn't just about brutality anyway. Honesty can be compassion. Honesty can be telling somebody something difficult without turning it into cruelty. It can simply be saying, "Look, this is what I actually feel," and giving another person the dignity of knowing that whatever they do next is based on something real.
If you're truly an honest person, awesome. I'm here for that. I'm glad you are.
Just understand that honesty doesn't exempt you from the rest of the human condition.