Honestly

I will know an honest man when he lies about being so

I am sure you have all encountered, and perhaps done it yourself, that a sentence is started with "honestly..." or "to be honest..." or some similar token of intended special sincerity.

It is a peculiar thing to say. Is it to be taken that the speaker otherwise is not speaking in earnest, that nothing else said has been or will be honest or true? Or, as I would like to think, so that what follows is something that should be treated with elevated suspicion?

There is a company in the United States that is called Honest Inc.and it runs the website honest.com, peddling consumer goods. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I would ever trust shopping there.

I have sometimes had a tricky relationship with the truth. As I child, I would have rather lied than take the consequences of something bad I did, and so I did. And lied about lying. Later in life, to be honest, I have not had difficulties telling lies when I have felt a need to do so in the spirit of Pink:

"The only problems I've ever had with being honest is telling people how I feel about them or saying how I feel about other people."

I wish I could say the only problems part about myself. There have been occasions, where I have been, as I was in childhood sometimes, a very bad boy and lied about it, so as not to get caught and face the consequences. To all those who have been concerned, I offer my most sincere apologies (sic. as if my other apologies are not sincere) and hope to be forgiven.

I do not believe in any god to absolve me from these sins, so I have some truths to tell to the people concerned before I can apologise. If you recognise the situation, you also have some work to do.

It is a cliché but true that sometimes it is the most difficult thing to be honest about yourself. What is your actual motive for doing this or that? Why am I writing this blog, is it just the urge to write or some strain of narcissism? Am I really all that self-confident as I pretend to be and project myself to the world? Where did that little boy go hiding?

Perhaps it takes a crisis to wake you up to yourself. I have discovered quite a few things that I will need to work on therapeutically when I can get around to it. Honestly, I will.