I don’t care if it will hurt my feelings. You have to always tell me the truth. Let me get mad and upset, but I will respect you more for the truth.
Do you want it sugar-coated, or do you want the plain, unadulterated facts?
There are moments when we are confronted by reality. Good. Bad. Or otherwise.
Reality is just that. Real.
It comes in massive wave that can be devastating or exhilarating and everything between.
When we are dealing with partial truths, we are also dealing with partial lies, be they a direct lie, an error of omission, or other.
The partial truth stimulates a perspective, giving a reaction…. And that reaction may encompass a wide range of emotional responses, predicated upon the subject matter at hand.
Once we have entered the tunnel of emotional response, we are all the more hard-pressed to find our center, in which our internal being works to free itself from emotion, and derive a new perspective, predicated upon that which has been shared.
This works on both positive and negative information that has been shared. We are just as likely to get jacked up on key information as being extraordinarily positive as we are on learning of something negative. Once that information has crossed the threshold of our outer ear and made its way into the brain, it is substantially more difficult to thwart, control, measure, rationalize, contemplate… or whatever emotion might be giving us the need to put our brains into full gear.
Once the brain is engaged, the battle for control of mindset is on… full scale.
We may presume we have full control of our mind, but it only takes one small item of news that is substantive in our world to take full control of the mind and render everything that we had been thinking about prior as inconsequential and immaterial in comparison to that which we have just learned.
Given the enormous strength and reach of a specific information to assimilate a human being, and thereby render them far less effectual than they might have been previously, does it not make sense that having the complete truth is of far more value than a sugar-coated recitation of whatever the bearer of the information was comfortable sharing?
When we receive the truth, we must be capable of handling it. The truth is often, not pretty. It is in some cases, harsh. So if you demand nothing but the truth, you had best bolster yourself for the ability to receive it and then, even more importantly, to deal with it.
As a final thought… do not kill the messenger. If you expect someone to regularly tell you the straight story, you must not get furious with them if they bring news that is not pleasing to you, even if they are the cause of the information that is making you go through this moment. If you demand authenticity, you must honor the authenticity or you will never get it from that person (or perhaps others) again.
Happy Sunday!
Brian Weiner 