Honesty
By: Lisa     

     “Look into my eyes, and tell me what you see.  Someone real?
 – “Archetype” Fear Factory

     I know someone who claims she’s “honest at heart,” and while this statement would usually lead to a complacent reaction, the exact opposite happened in this case because I know this person is far from honest, based on my years of experience in dealing with her. It got me thinking about what an honest person really is, and as I vented my frustrations, I came to the conclusion that it’s extremely difficult to be an honest person because, in my opinion, honesty reaches far beyond merely being able to tell the truth. To be truly honest, you have to be willing to put yourself on the line and be selfless. You have to feel empathy, and you have to be motivated to learn about what’s going on beyond your personal life. In essence, you have to have an open mind and an open heart. 

     Being a “social chameleon,” a term I have dubbed to anyone who changes their attitudes, likes, and dislikes based on the crowd of friends they hang out with at the time, is not being honest. And, of course, it goes without saying that someone who is self-centered and materialistic is not honest either. But what bothers me most are those individuals who claim to be honest yet show nothing but cold-heartedness. Those individuals, for example, who will be unselfish and giving toward another who needs help but in the end don’t care at all for that person’s well-being, are not honest. These people are actors, and actors offer nothing more than false portraits of who they really are. One can pretend to care for another human being just as easily as they can pretend to care for an animal of another species. This past summer, I had to witness a cat that had just been hit by car get dragged to the sidewalk by someone who had the courtesy to get it off the road. Excluding myself and the friend I was with, a whopping total of 3 people stopped to help, and that number did not include the driver who hit the animal. Minutes later, the cat was dead, blood pouring from its eyes and nostrils. I was too outraged to react with any emotion aside from sheer anger, but a young woman who was among the 5 of us who had stopped to help was flooded with tears. My friend watched it take its final breaths as I futilely tried to get 411 to connect me to someone who could help. Minutes after this, a car pulled up and an old woman came out of it, hoping to God that it wasn’t the cat that she’d been feeding and visiting for months that had been killed, but it was. With both pain and gratefulness in her eyes, we helped her put the cat in her car so that she could bury it. She was days away from finally being able to bring it to the ASPCA shelter she had been in touch with, waiting for an opening to try and find the cat a home. This was an honest woman, not someone who fed the cat just because it was cute at the time, but rather, because she genuinely cared for it. I know it seems as though I always refer back to animals when I make my arguments in this column, but I truly believe that a genuine person is one that is able to recognize the connection humanity has with Nature. If William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge could understand the importance of this concept in the latter part of the 18th century, it should be even easier to accept it and live by it today. Honest people are able to realize that a dead animal, whether a wild animal or one that is domesticated, is just as much a part of a family or group within its own species as any individual human being is a part of a family and circle of friends. Any death is a loss to someone or some animal that’s left behind. Ultimately, being honest with yourself means being able to come to a realization that hurts you because you’re finally able to see a situation for what it really is. That raccoon you ran over in the street is more important than you’d like to think; open your eyes and you’ll see how much it hurts when you strip the shades away and learn the truth. 

     Individuals in the past couple years have told me the cost of living in northeastern NJ is so high because we live in such a clean environment. Scientific statistics, that are easily accessible to anyone who cares and has the motivation to seek them out, plainly state that we live in one of the most polluted areas in the country. Our soil is filled with toxic chemicals from careless companies that don’t want to clean up after themselves, our air is full of fine particulates that cause serious health problems such as asthma, and our water comes from some of the most endangered rivers in the U.S. That’s the harsh reality, and when I share this information with others, they still don’t seem to care much about it, reacting in such a way that leads me to believe they don’t even want to internalize the truth. Honesty means a willingness to educate yourself, an attempt to open your eyes. It means looking around and seeing the problems that we constantly try to ignore. It’s about putting yourself on the line to get hurt with the truth that’s going to slap you in the face and wake you up, and it’s about being willing to get up and make a difference.

     Another set of individuals whom I consider to be completely dishonest are those who are entirely materialistic. I’ve come across many people who feel they attain status by the type of cars they drive (i.e. Mazda 6, Honda Civic, Hyundai Tiburon). Here’s the real truth: no one cares about what car you drive; no one admires you more because of the car you drive; the car you’re driving now has cost you, is costing you, and will cost you a significant amount of money that could be used elsewhere; the car you drive is polluting the air you breathe, and it’s killing you because of that. You’re not turning heads when you drive by because you own a car that any other middle class American can own if he/she wanted to. I have to be honest, though, (after all, this is an article about honesty) if someone happens to drive by in a Lamborghini, Lotus, Ferrari, or GTO, I’ll turn my head to stare. 

     I write this column to expose others to things that they need to know about so that they can choose to ignore what I say or use what I say to help bring about a positive change. I try to expose honesty through this column by writing about things that people normally don’t bother thinking about or researching, or simply aren’t exposed to. So when someone said she’s honest at heart, and I know better than to believe that, I was ticked off, to say the least. In order to be honest, you need to first know yourself, and then you have to step up and educate yourself on things that matter, and you have to be willing to get hurt in the process, because the old adage, “the truth hurts,” is true, and while ignorance may very well be bliss, there’s too much on the line to be walking blind.