Core Value #3: Honesty

It’s Sunday evening and I’m fresh back from a weekend at the river cabin where we stay for a dear friend’s birthday weekend each winter—lots of natural beauty and very little phone service, which was a timely rejuvenation treatment for my soul. I did a little pre-writing for this post, sketching out the edges of honesty in my mind, trying to decide how best to describe why it’s so important to me. 

Then, on the ride home, we came back online and became aware of ICE agents’ horrific execution of Alex Pretti in MN on Saturday morning, as well as the myriad statements, responses, and cries for justice coming from all over our country. It is overwhelming. I am angry, sad, scared, jaded, and numb all at the same time. I am full of actionable energy with no idea how to actually help repair our shattered systems. 

Sitting down to finish this short essay about honesty now feels trivial and out-of-step with my spinning mind and sore heart. I’m tempted to table this project and go back to consuming social media and stressing the rest of the evening. But that wouldn’t be helpful—not for me, not for the world. 

While I’m still figuring out the next right thing when it comes to politics and current events, I know it is always right for me to write. Forcing my thoughts and feelings through the part of my brain that squeezes them into words and arranges them as ideas, typing them out, re-organizing a bit, and sharing them—this helps me to find the truth, settles my soul, and gives me direction. So here we go, not despite it all—but in light of it all:

Honesty: telling the truth, does not engage in deception, is forthright and candid.

We’ve already covered autonomy and friendship as core values, delving deeper into honesty is next.

Honesty is extremely personal, and for me it is this—writing my way through exhaustion, shame, pain, or confusion until the truth emerges and becomes plain.

Like a 49’er panning for gold, I need to show up consistently, no matter the weather, to swirl away the slurry and shake-tap the pebbles to the wayside. Steadily and patiently, day after day, knowing what’s true will make itself known. It has to. What is heaviest and most solid will always separate from what isn’t, eventually. 

Like the rich grains of wheat among its chaff, truth cannot hide if you keep stomping, dancing. 

Or like the undetectable shakings and shudderings of the earth as it freezes and thaws over and over, slowly moving stones towards the light.

Truth is truth—gold, grain, stone. 

Honesty is action.

Honesty is action. Sometimes it’s ours—the swirling and tapping, the dancing and stomping. The daily choices, effort, and work of seeking truth. Other times, the world acts for us. Truth surfaces inevitably, like stones pushed up from the ground each spring—a natural force that cannot be persuaded or reckoned with.

When I’m practicing honesty, I slow down and lean into the heart of the moment. I open my eyes to really see what’s around me and then write down what I’m hearing within me. Here’s a short poem I wrote at the riverside yesterday morning, doing just that: 

Rivers almost write 
poems by themselves. 

I want to splash forward
then lay myself down 
flat upon the rocks, arms out 
and face towards the sun,
close my eyes to let 
the water and light 
wash over my body, 
rippling through my clothes, my hair
freezing then melting me 
into the land, the earth, 
until I become a part of it all
particle by particle, 
each one swelling, shaking loose, 
breaking free and swirling off 
into the eddies 
down the rivers course, 
wherever it may go.

If only it weren’t so cold,
I might.

If only.
Always if only.

Reading over it now, I see the truth on display. Wanting and restraint. Wanting something so clearly, viscerally, and still finding reasons to hold myself back. 

—Like being reasonable, practical, or appropriate. 

Honesty might be inappropriate.

Honesty could be the opposite of being “appropriate,” especially as a woman. We’ve been trained to be quiet, palatable, agreeable, pleasant, warm, cooperative, forgiving, generous. Choosing honesty means speaking out, showing your edges, setting limits, and saying no. Who I am is necessary, and covering or filtering or trying to camouflage only does disservice to someone. Honesty means slowly, carefully washing away the layers of cover-up to find what was originally there, underneath “appropriate.” 

Then sharing it with celebration.

Honesty means trusting that who I really am and what I have to say is okay. My individuality is on purpose, not a mistake.  Whatever is there when the lights turn on, is worth seeing, worth owning without shame. It all belongs. 

Three years ago, I sat at this exact same spot on the river, and penned very different words to express the same idea:

I walk up to the River, and her expanse, her sound, the shape of her banks and surface enfolds me within it somehow. Comes over me, drawing in all my senses. 

And I want to weep. With longing, with appreciative jealousy. With joy at seeing a thing I wish were mine. But I’m also just so glad it exists at all and I can stand before it and maybe somehow soak it in and become part of it, or more like it, or connected to it.

The river’s edges are.

You can see them and feel them and they shift based on weather and tides and to suit the land she passes through. But they are clear, delineated, and she doesn’t worry about whether they offend, whether they’ll be respected or if they’re “too much.” She is quiet and crashingly loud in turns, without timidity or explanation or apology. She is smooth and slow, deep and swift, or leaping in raging crests of white and turquoise.

She is, and feels no Should-ness based on imaginary perceptions or opinions of those standing on her shores. 

And—still they come to her shores. To play. To eat and drink. To bathe and adventure. To bask in beauty and truth and come away a little bit healed. She is all of herself, and forfeits nothing in so being.

Honesty is this—writing, swirling and tapping, dancing and stomping, being quiet or speaking out, letting edges be without softening or apologizing. Honesty is action.    

Honesty means being fully me, whatever it takes.