As I've confessed, I've never understood the reaction I get when I give it. That honest opinion or statement. I'm by no means an open book or a straight-down-the-line kind of person which honesty and transparency automatically suggests and yet when I feel backed in a corner, rushed to form some decision (before I'm ready) then it comes with no pre-thought. I don't like, I won't play games, even if to do so would be in my interests. Somehow I always put the other thing or person's interests first.
Yes, I'd be a poor survivor in a 'of the fittest' competition or catastrophe and, yes, it occasionally annoys me that I don't have that self-preservation instinct in certain situations, but it seems it's not a behavioural trait I have control over.
I can pretend vagueness and refuse to be pinned down, but even this light form of pulling wool over eyes doesn't sit well, like how eating an animal that was stressed at its time of slaughter can give you indigestion. And yes, I do believe that. It's not, I don't think (well, I wouldn't), just a vegetarian fallacy since I've heard some farmers and game-keepers espouse the same view. Stress, as we all should have learned by now, produces many mental and physical anomalies, and I'm sure the toughening of meat is one of them.
It's a pity that it (stress) doesn't, on the whole, strengthen you mentally rather than, over the long-term, weaken. Or at least that's been my experience if not dealt with or prolonged. In short bursts, I grant, it can be useful, productive even. Otherwise, it bleaches or heightens your colour, induces depression or mania, causes your pulse to race or your heart to beat erratically, your hair to fall out or grey, depletes or increases your appetite and deprives you of precious sleep, that if it could be had (or found) would restore you.
Can dishonesty be considered as corrosive? I guess, but the process would be even slower like metal turning to rust or lime scale building up in appliances, and then only if you're a sensitive and not a desensitised person.
If only, like Pinocchio, our noses sprouted like a branch every time we told a falsehood; there'd be no hiding then and no other undesirable visible or invisible guilty symptoms. But as you might have gathered fairy tales are my mainstay in most arguments, which surely isn't in itself healthy in a woman, or anyone, who has reached maturity: a middling level of adulthood. That being the case, as I've so honestly stated, is my judgement sound? No, it's just honest and from my own particular perspective, which may, at times, be subject to the sort of morals fairy tales and Aesop’s fables employ.
But don't think, for one second, this principled stance is not, whilst it may be lauded, burdensome too. Truth, even if tactfully given, makes you, the truth-giver, lose out because although it may be praised, at the end of the day people don't, as I mentioned earlier, understand it, they distrust it even. Look at whistle-blowers, when do they ever receive only cheers and applause? There's always abuse or ostracism, and if that wasn't enough they can lose in other ways too: their job and along with that financial security, their reputation.
Truth and honesty is too often seen as manipulative, malicious or threatening, presented by those with an ulterior motive, whereas usually (in most cases) their nature is more altruistic. So life, in effect, penalises you for being good.
I, for example, can't agreed to a proposal with a clear conscience if I know I may retract later, although others would do that and more. For me, it's too duplicitous, but to some it's not unscrupulous at all – it's good common sense and business intelligence, which is obviously, others would say, what I don't have in spades, just highfalutin principles that never pay out.
Picture credit: The Good Shepherd, Pieter Bruegel the Elder
