Honesty – Is It Always the Best Policy?
“Honesty is the best policy. If I lose mine honor, I lose myself.” – William Shakespeare, English dramatist, playwright and poet (1564-1616)
“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” – Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States, author of the Declaration of Independence (1762-1826)
Separated by more than two centuries, William Shakespeare and Thomas Jefferson both knew the value of honesty. Shakespeare equated honesty with honor, while Jefferson liked honesty to wisdom. Fast-forward to today and how should we interpret honesty as it relates to our daily lives in recovery? Actually, some things never change. Honesty is just as important today as it ever was.
For those of us in recovery, honesty is critical. Without honesty, we will never come to grips with the falsehoods we’ve told ourselves and others. If we fail to be truthful, we will seek to justify our actions and shirk our own responsibility for what we’ve done and continue to do. Without being honest, we will not reach our goals that we’ve set for ourselves in sobriety. Sooner or later we will bump up against a brick wall that’s largely of our own making. By seeking to avoid the truth, by shading and distorting what’s real, we will be doing ourselves and our loved ones a tremendous disservice.
In short, we have to be honest if we hope to continue to make progress in recovery.
How do we know if we are being honest? It is really quite simple. We have to face the truth about who we are and what we’ve done. We have to tell the truth without resorting to lies, deception, half-truths or omissions. And we need to act the truth – doing the things we know we must to embrace and strengthen our recovery.
Is honesty easy? Is it always the only right way to go? If honesty were easy, everyone would always do it. The truth is that honesty requires integrity, and some of us don’t have that in too much supply early in recovery. It is, however, something that we can develop. We learn how by doing, by not taking short-cuts or looking for the easy way out. Maybe we could only tell half-truths and get away with it. But over time, those half-truths will come back to haunt us. We’ll find out soon enough that going part-way in recovery means we’re sabotaging our efforts and putting our sobriety in jeopardy.
Yes, being honest is sometimes painful. Yes, it means that we may be fearful of what will happen when we tell the truth. But honesty is absolutely critical if we hope to make continued progress in recovery. In that respect, honesty is always the best policy.
