“Brutal Honesty” Blog #93
What if it hurts too much to tell myself the truth?
Why can’t I get that person who means so much to me, to just listen?
When will I be able to go it alone and not worry about everything?
Treasure these moments for they are “teachable moments”. No pain - no gain. Once
upon a time, not so long ago in my own life, I felt completely lost, all alone. If people were
all around me, that didn’t matter, I was completely in the dark.
Now, how do I tell if I am living my life with brutal honesty, or dwelling in illusion?
Most of all, I need to have an open heart. My heart has to be open, not closed.
A story that comes quickly to mind, is about my choice of relationships as I grew older. I
found comfort in being with people that had so many problems. Probably because by
focusing on their problems, I could avoid my own. More often than not, the brutal truth
hurts. How often have we heard a friend or someone close to us say, “I am going to be
brutally honest with you”. Do we want to hear this from someone? Especially when
someone says to you, “all you do is complain, you do nothing about it” So suddenly it is
not about the brutal honestly, its about “my hurt feelings I feel”.
There are so many complicated outcomes of hurt feelings. More than anything, this
damages relationships sometimes permanently. The whole point of saying “Brutal
honesty’ is exactly that - brutal means violent, savagely. Then you have the word honest”
which basically means moral truth, morally correct. The minute my words can hurt some
one, every thing changes and the whole point of what is said, gets lost completely.
FEELING REALLY HURT.
It’s a long time after we share such brutal honesty with someone we care about, that we
can come to grips with the “Now, WHY WAS THAT SAID”? This is HARD TRUTH. It’s obvious
there is no safe haven in brutal honesty. So why go there? Because we can still be
brutally honest and have compassion in our voice when we speak. IF I can manage to
turn the tables so to speak, start with being brutally honest with myself. This is THE FIRST,
the most important place to begin.
I look at my life and I see the same two paths every single day. There is the path of
honesty or the path of dishonesty. For me to be truthful or to be a liar? Before I can help
anyone else I must learn to help myself. I can go back quietly in my mind, all the choices I
have made that I may be ashamed of, SO, I ask for forgiveness..
Can I and DO I accept there is no right way to do something wrong?
I once had a girlfriend in high school. She did not know how much I admired her beauty.
Yet one day she came to school with a wild look. Her hair was dyed to a dirty bluish black.
She had piercings everywhere and had now given in to self tattooing. Her behavior
encouraged all the wrong kind of friendships. Her grades dropped and her habits were
horrible. Smoking drugs, sex became her greatest vices. She hid behind this darkness.
and so in the end her final choice was death at a young age. She lived wild and she died
even wilder. This girl did not know brutal honesty with herself. She lived inside an illusion
that gave no truth yet in the end, swallowed her up. She looked for a “quick fix” everywhere
outside herself. Her initial beauty that I found so captivating, became the frosting on a
stale birthday cake. IF only someone could have gotten through to her with “Brutal honest
compassion”. But she was not open. “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”
When we are dishonest with ourself it eats away at us inside. The dishonesty festers and
grows, spreading a black mold into our conscience, blocking our ability to “feel” and be in
touch with a guilty conscience. Because there is an internal law that abides, “we are
constantly internally punishing ourselves for every wrong we commit, and reward ourself
for all acts of goodness that we do”. This is the sub conscience.
So as I come to a close on my belief in Brutal Honesty, I stand with one truth above all.
“I must love God with all my heart, mind and soul. I must love myself above all else.
Nothing else, no one else and no place else can give me the love that I must learn
to feel for myself.
This is my moment NOW- I AM brutally honest with myself and have a complete
change of heart. The universe will show me, my Lord will show me, I can
show Me each day how to “show up for myself!”
Rudyard Kipling said it best when he said:
IF YOU CAN FORCE YOUR HEART AND NERVE TO SERVE YOUR TURN
LONG AFTER THEY ARE GONE, AND SO “HOLD ON”…
WHEN THERE IS NOTHING LEFT IN YOU EXCEPT THE
WILL WHICH SAYS TO THEM; ‘HOLD ON!”
So this must be the day that I stop making any and all excuses for me. I must stop with
the illusion and have a “complete change of heart”. When I realize that I must take
complete responsibility for ME and only me. When I see that by depending on my heart to
soften all MY past regrets, I now invite HIM, my Lord Jesus Christ to be at the helm of my
ship. I can sail through rough waters and be not afraid, for HE is with me. My brutal
honesty heals my heart. I no longer just survive, but I now feel I can thrive and do what I
must do one day at a time.
“Do I dare to be brutally honest starting right now?
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