Honesty

Earlier in the week while I was at work I saw a little old lady come out of her house and yell at three dump truck drivers across the street to stop idling their trucks. All three of them did go and shutoff their trucks. They were standing around talking, waiting for their turn; they probably stood there for a good 30 minutes. Because the elderly lady wasn’t afraid to voice her opinion she saved the neighborhood from 30 minutes x3 trucks worth of diesel fumes. I thought it was pretty cool; it made quite an impression on me, that was one badass old lady.

It made me think about how voicing an opinion can have a huge impact. I believe most people tend to keep their opinions, when it comes to strangers anyways, to themselves, usually because we’re afraid of offending someone. For example, if you saw a stranger chuck a McDonald’s bag on the ground in front of you would you tell them they should pick it up? Would you lecture them? Would you pick it up yourself and say nothing or just walk on by? Most people won’t confront a stranger to do something better. I think everyone could benefit if we did though. Sometimes people just don’t think about certain things and pointing it out might actually make them think twice next time. There’s probably a fine line between trying to be helpful and just being an opinionated jerk though. I guess trying not to be too blunt and reserving a certain amount of tact would help.

Getting over the fear of voicing your opinion and being completely honest with strangers can feel very freeing. I’ve been experimenting with it lately and trying to make a point of not staying quite about things I used to. Most people tend to respect honesty. I know I do. I get really frustrated when I’m talking to someone and I can tell they’re holding back what they really want to say. I tend to shy away from people that aren’t honest with me or themselves, and I’m not just talking about the superficial “lying/secretive” way, I mean people that are always worried about being “proper” or up keeping silly etiquette that takes away from relevant human contact and intimacy.

I’m not too sure how to explain what I mean. Basically I think people shouldn’t be afraid to be open, completely accessible in a fashion to other people. I’m working on it, I’ve changed a lot in this past year and I have improved in this aspect, it doesn’t really scare me anymore to be deeply honest with people I don’t know very well. I’ve noticed that other people really like it when you’re sincere and they’ll be less afraid of doing the same. It makes it easy to get close to people and actually form strong bonds. Plus it feels so damn good! I’ve probably had more interesting conversations during these past couple years than the rest of my life combined. Journaling and keeping this blog has really helped me work on being earnest, it’s a great way to get over telling personal things to random people. It’s funny, a lot of the books I’ve been reading on my list are 19^th-20^th century English (British) novels and a common topic is dealing with their high society, prim and proper, always worried about etiquette, ideals and how they lived shallow lives. I’ve often found myself getting very angry at imaginative characters because they’re afraid of living and concerned about the littlest, unimportant everythings.