“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” –Thumper

“Mens regnum bona possidet” (”An honest heart is a kingdom in itself”) –Seneca

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” –Cain

To hold back out of kindness, even perhaps mercy, is a time-honored tradition often associated with polite society. It expedites, it smooths over, it lets us not butt heads over every disagreement. But every time we withhold the truth, we also lie a little bit.

Honesty frees us from the fences every lie puts up. When one has to lie in the first place, it’s usually because the true answer would have undesirable consequences, and so to avoid the compounded consequences, one often chooses to lie to cover the lie.  I’m sure everyone has heard something like this from one’s mother.

Recently I have been finding that when the admonition to be honest collides with the admonition to say only nice things, I side with honesty.  I’ve been feeling rather blunt, and perhaps a bit simple, because for whatever reason, the ability to dissimulate carries with it an air of sophistication.  And so I have injured my pride by being straightforward, and others’ feeling by being honest, and my reputation by being less than nice.

I wonder (out loud, apparently) if there were two right ways to handle those situations, and if so, why I seem to have consistently chosen the more innocent?  In many ways this is a trap of my own doing; if I didn’t care about the consequences of my words (or lack thereof), this wouldn’t be a problem; many of these recent confrontations were borne out of a feeling of responsibility; the idea that, through my honesty, I might open up someone’s eyes to something that they really should know but weren’t about to find out for themselves.

And so I am either my brother’s keeper, honest in my loving criticism, shouldering the burden of speaking the cruel truth because I have the sad gift of seeing it; or else I am a meddler, interfering in other’s lives, choosing to belittle them for some unknown reason.  Or more probably, a little of each.  In any case, I wish I had been able to say more nice things lately.