If You Were Being Honest
If you have anything that you would really like to say, you should probably just say it now. There is almost certainly some little thing, that you’ve been saving up for just the right moment. Good or bad, you have something you’ve been waiting to say and you’re never going to stop thinking about saying it until one day you do. I am writing without any knowledge of what your particular tidbit, secret or pent up sentiment is, but you know it. You’re thinking of it right now. Look at you being all secret.
Imagine a world where none of these little things went unsaid, that we didn’t spend our days planning monologues that will never happen, and instead just said what we had to say. I had a professor in my freshman year of college that made an interesting point about this hypothetical. We were having a discussion about a potential future where brain implants enabled constant open communication with everyone around you, in which everyone could basically read everyone else’s minds. He said something to this effect: “Without the ability to lie, or at least hide information from those around you, the institution of marriage could not exist.” He was extremely good natured and we all laughed along with him, in unanimous agreement I might add, but how troubling of an assertion to make. My professor was in his 80’s, he had a successful career behind him and a wife and a family, he seemed to have achieved the ideal American life, yet he insinuated that if he had been fully honest, it would have collapsed around him. Of course we all understand the point he is making. Instinctively, we know just how much of our interaction with humans is founded on some level of deception or concealment, not out of any malicious intent or oppression, but simply because you can’t always say what you are thinking. But ever since my wonderful professor made this joke, I have had the question in my mind, What would happen if every one said everything that they have been trying not to say? And, if we go our whole lives withholding certain truths to maintain an external peace, what are we gaining, if anything at all?
There are two ways to think about this. Let’s start with the more exciting one. People gain nothing from concealing their inner thoughts, and white lying, deceiving others and preventing themselves from living their best lives. Everyone would be better off if each person always said exactly what they were thinking. Though the world as we know it may fall apart: there might be a few bad years of endless divorces and firings, millions of confessions of unrequited love, and some brutally honest reviews of children’s musical performances, what would emerge would be a more truthful, fulfilling world. Worst case: Some people would confess love, and others would honestly reject them, some demand raises and others let them know just how little they are worth and let them go. But then everyone is free from their endless heartache, their dead-end job, their lousy employee and their friend that won’t stop pining for them. It would be tough to get through, but where every one ends up, is where they really belong, if everyone was being honest.
The second way of thinking about things is a little bit subtler. That thing you’ve been waiting for the nerve to say, those things we think but keep to ourselves because it is just simpler that way- we don’t say these things, not because we don’t have the courage, but because we don’t really mean them yet. The mind is complex, and it is important to remember that each one of us is simultaneously the voice desperately wanting to blurt out every little thought, and the restrictive force that keeps these things inside. There is that part of you that is constantly assessing your life, picking out ever little flaw, and highlight, making snap judgements and conjuring pipe dreams. There is also that part of you, though it may feel like cowardess, that is constantly calculating the outcomes of every little thought, making sure these inner thoughts aren’t expressed. This can be small: you don’t tell the librarian she looks like Jeff Bridges because you know that is a weird thing to do. You tell your waiter the chicken isn’t dry when it is because you’re not a monster. It can also be big: you keep your feelings for someone a secret because you are afraid to put yourself out there. You never stand up to some asshole in your life because it would just be too intense. It is easy to look at these and see varying degrees of social anxiety and people-pleasing. But I think it is something more. Each of these examples is just an observation, one of millions that your mind makes every day: Jeff Bridges, dry chicken, pretty girl, mean boss- you notice and think a million things a day, and when you don’t say something like this, you’re not being dishonest, you’re being a functioning human.
Because- though it may be hard to believe in our world of deception and hidden feelings- people still confess undying love and tell their bosses to fuck off. Trust me, I have done it (the love thing, not the boss one). When you have something you need to say, and I mean really need to say, then one way or another you’ll say it. So what changes to finally make you say it? I think that it is certainty. Once every warring faction of your psyche can come to the conclusion that yeah, my boss can fuck off, then I think you finally just come out and say it. Everything up until that point is just deliberation.
I have to believe that this is the case. Otherwise, our world is full of a bunch of people who are lying to their spouses, never confessing their true love, and wasting their lives working for people they desperately want to tell to fuck off.
And that could never be the case, right?
