My dad, who will be 90 next month, taught me the importance of always telling the truth. Yes, I said that right, “Always
telling the truth!” .ere was no room for little white lies, half-truths, damage control (excuses for selfpreservation), subjective thinking, rationalization, the end justifies the means or any other dishonest response.
Not telling the truth is just that, being dishonest. Don’t be deluded. .at’s what it was then and that’s what it is today.
Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. No cover ups. No spin. It’s the absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others through untruths.
American lecturer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, maintained, “God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose [the absence of mental stress or anxiety]. Take which you please; you can never have both.”
My wise father–as most sons come to fully appreciate–would agree. For truth can be heavy . . . therefore few care to carry it.
With the sobering reality of another election before us, what will be our response?
Abraham Lincoln was, “A firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. .e great point is to bring them the real facts.”
Given our country’s experience with the last election cycle, we seemed to be more interested in touchstone slogans: “hope and change” than anything of substance.
Here’s where truth becomes pivotal. If we are looking for peace of soul and pleasure, then we will willingly believe the rhetoric; but if we be a devotee of truth, we will then inquire, ask questions, “seek truth” as the bumper sticker implores from its chrome soapbox.
Seeking truth, however, is not as easy as slapping a slogan on the bumper of your car. It can get a person in trouble and increasingly results in being slapped with a label yourself.
“.e masses have never thirsted a.er truth,” writes Gustave Le Bon in his 1897 book, .e Crowd.
“Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.” “For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are o.en more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.” Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), Italian statesman and political philosopher.
Consider Galileo Galilei–who ironically spent the last ten years of his life under house arrest for supporting a truth that others refused to accept . . . a truth that eventually they would come to discover for themselves. Galileo maintained that, “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered, the point is to discover them.”
Galileo’s point is well taken . . . discover truth.
.e search for truth implies a duty and not too many of us are drawn to duty. Being honest truth-tellers requires strength of character and a commitment to principles, hardly the vernacular of those accustomed to ease.
However, when it comes to empowering those who will represent us (read: serve):
“We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is an absolute prerequisite to efficien t servic e t o th e public. Unles s a person is honest, we have no right to keep them in public life; it matters not how brilliant their capacity.” –.eodore Roosevelt
Whether we’re talking about a congressional candidate for the Eighth District, a local candidate for commissioner, mayor, school referendum, golf course or newspaper article, in the words of respected American broadcast journalist, Edward R. Murrow, “To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful.”
In a time of universal deceit, on so many fronts, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. However, to my dad, it was the expected, right thing to do.
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