Truth and Honesty Lead to Happiness
Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want. ~ Margaret Young
It’s important in our lives to have someone outside of us who can reflect honesty back upon us. We all lie to ourselves, I don’t eat that much, I don’t drink a lot of coffee, I get enough sleep, we all tell ourselves things that are not true. Most of these are innocuous lies that don’t have much impact, but some of these lies to impinge upon our happiness. I serve this role for my friends, perhaps a bit more vigorously than I need to, but in the end I am the one person many of my friends know will tell them the truth no matter what the consequences. Of course this also leads to the other side of the coin, they will often not ask me questions because they are afraid of the answer. However this is a trade-off I accept as it seems that the questions they avoid are a lot less serious than the ones they ask.
I remember back in graduate school I had become friends with a really pretty undergraduate, I had a bit of a crush on her but it was obvious that was never going anywhere and she was a lot of fun to hang out with. One day, excitedly she rushed up to me and asked, “How do you like my new hairdo?” “It looks like shit,” I replied and she burst into tears and called me several names and pointed out that I was a mean evil bastard. You see she’d been getting compliments all day on her new hair cut. A funny thing happened when she related this story to her friends, some started to back track on their previous compliments. You see I was the bad guy so they weren’t the ones who were hurting her feelings. In the end it came out, the hair cut wasn’t so great.
Now granted I could have been more diplomatic in my response, but in the end she became one of those people who knew she could trust to tell her the truth. We all need these people in our lives because we can’t move forward in our pursuit of happiness without a true accounting of what our life really is at present. So find some honest reflection in yourself or another and I promise you’ll have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
Other Posts You Might Enjoy!
Fear is Killing Your Happiness
Our Best Happiness Posts of 2015
The Ministry of Happiness 