time to cancel the policy?

We've all heard it said a million times that honesty is the best policy, but is it really? Sure, it's good to tell the truth most of the time, but is it always best to be completely honest with another person in every situation? Let's think about it.

For our first scenario, we'll use an incident that occurred in my last relationship (I say "last" like there's been so many). My girlfriend at the time (we'll call her "Jessica"), got her hair cut a month or so into the relationship. While it wasn't a drastic change in length, to me at least it was a pretty big change in her "look." When I saw the new 'do, she asked me immediately if I liked it. I thought for a second and said something along the lines of, "I'm not sure yet. I definitely don't dislike it or think it looks bad, but I liked your old haircut a lot and this one's going to take some getting used to." Obviously, that wasn't the answer she was looking for. She wanted me to simply say, "It looks great. I love it." whether I meant that or not. And maybe that's what I should have said. But, as I told her at the time, "If I tell you the truth now, then when you ask me another question down the line like, 'Am I fat?' I can say, 'not at all, sweetheart. You're beautiful." and you'll know I mean it. I chose to keep my credibility rather than telling her what she wanted to hear. On the one hand, my total honesty (some might say lack of tact) was probably one of the myriad reasons we split up. On the other hand, at least I can look back and say that I never lied to her. Was it worth it? Hard to say.

Speaking of break-ups, one of the times when people lie the most is when they're breaking up with or rejecting someone. They feel bad enough about the whole thing already and try their best to spare the other person's feelings, even if that means giving them some false reason for the decision rather than telling them the truth. But is that wrong? Personally, I've always said that I'd rather have a girl tell me, "you're ugly and annoying and I don't like you," than give me the old standby, "I don't want to date anybody right now" (translation: I don't want to date you. Ever.) or some other made-up excuse. That's just me though. I can't claim to speak for everyone. Some people might prefer to have their feelings spared. I was actually discussing this subject with a friend the other day and she wondered if maybe it isn't best to sugar coat things sometimes. And it's definitely a logical point. Unless you have some sort of grudge, nobody wants to hurt another person unneccessarily. Why tell a person your real reason for not wanting to date them, she wondered, if it's not something wrong with them or something they can change? What purpose does it serve? My answer was that it doesn't need to serve a purpose. Honesty is intrinsically good. It's right and good to be honest with someone regardless of what it accomplishes. Sure, it may save someone a few self-esteem points to tell them a lie or half-truth, but rejection hurts regardless and at least they won't lie awake in bed at night wondering what went wrong or if they have a chance in the future if you tell the truth. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and say that, when you lie to someone in a break-up or rejection, you're really worried more about your own feelings than theirs. You want to feel less mean and not seem like the bad guy. And I don't mean just girls. They probably get more chance to practice since they get asked out more, but I gave a girl a half-truth once myself in my younger, stupider years. In that case, like most I've seen, all it did was cause more problems and we went from being good friends to not on speaking terms anymore in a matter of months. If I'd been completely, brutally honest, I may have hurt her feelings, but maybe I'd still have her as a friend.

So there you have it. If you're protecting government secrets from the Iranians, by all means lie your butt off, but otherwise, what's the point? If we can't be honest with each other, why even bother communicating? That's my take on things at least. I know it's not exactly ground-breaking (So you mean lying is bad??? Wow!), but maybe it's a bit thought-provoking at least. The way I see it, honesty is, in fact, the best policy.