Walking the dog this morning, I got ruminating on the four tenants of stoicism; Wisdom, Temperance, Justice and Courage, and I got thinking about honestly. It seems to be some bit of justice and courage.
An element of honesty is acknowledging when you've make a mistake and working to resolve what's happened.
Honesty also takes so little mental load. It appears to me that habitual liars have a carry a pretty substantial mental load keeping all their stories straight. If you just keep to the facts, the story is just the story.
I feel personally with everything going on in your life, having to add the load of making sure when your talking to a particular person you make sure you give them one version of a story and when talking to another person you give them yet a different version of events.. I'm getting tired just writing this run on sentence!
I can see the allure in some sense. You're running late leaving work and when your wife calls you blame it on traffic. It takes the fault off you and displaces it onto something that's out of your control. But you just lied to your wife. So when you do get home, she asks, "where was the traffic jam?" now you're in it for another lie.. Now you need to remember all the details of that set of lies and whatever ripples out from there. vs.. "I'm sorry, I got caught up at work chatting with a co-worker. I'm late and it's my fault."
Sure, your wife might be disappointed, but the story ends there. Moreover, if she starts asking questions, you're merely recounting actual events.
I have to also imagine that habitual liars live with a sense of dread. Keep telling enough lies and stacking those lies high enough and eventually the jenga tower of bullshit comes crashing down. While that tower is teetering.. egads.
Being honest, everybody here has lied, myself included. Thankfully many years ago I got to stand on the sidelines and watch someone lie themselves into a corner and then it all went to shit. It was an instructive moment for me. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, they'd started with a small lie, but then had to buttress it with more and more lies until the bill came due.
Watching that debacle was enough for me to resolve I'd never put myself in such a wildly stupid spot.
Of course, simply googling for "Stoicism and Honesty" brought up some great articles including this quote from Marcus Aurelius.
“How rotten and fraudulent when people say they intend to ‘give it to you straight.’ What are you up to, dear friend? It shouldn’t need your announcement, but be readily seen, as if written on your forehead, heard in the ring of your voice, a flash in your eyes — just as the beloved sees it all in the lover’s glance. In short, the straightforward and good person should be like a smelly goat — you know when they are in the room with you.”
— MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 11.15
Be the smelly goat!
