A few months ago, I read a poem I had written out loud to a to a group of English Teachers (no easy feat in itself). Afterwards, a man I had never met before came up to me and said, “You know, I looked at you as you were about to read your poem and thought, she doesn’t even need to read it. I already know exactly what she’s going to say and how she feels.”
“Am I that transparent?” I asked.
“Well, yeah, I guess you are,” he said, realizing that he hadn’t said what he wanted to say in quite the right way. “It’s a good thing, though. Genuine. Honest. We have never met, and I feel like we grew up together just because of what you read and how you read it. And that transparency makes it feel like we’ve been friends for a very long time.”
And I get that a lot. I get the “Gosh, I know I just met you, but it seems like we’ve been friends for way longer than 20 minutes” thing when I’m traveling, when I meet a new mom at a park. (And no, this man was not hitting on me in any way shape or form. He’s just a good English teacher. And good English teachers are observant.)
And I wonder if this happens because I like to talk about myself when I meet new adults, because the only confidants I have these days are a 3 year old and an 18 month old, or if it’s because I’m honest. I’m honest about pretty much everything, and I consider it to be my greatest virtue… Now don’t hear me wrong. I lie sometimes. But it’s weird lies like this one:
My husband: “Honey, why did you make so much coffee?”
Me: “Because you always fill up your big travel mug and there’s only one cup left, and I like to have two cups of coffee in the morning.”
Silence
Me: “Okay, I lied. It was really because I wasn’t paying attention and I just kept scooping and counting and all of a sudden I had put too many scoops in there.”
What is the point of that lie? And I guess it wasn’t really a lie. But essentially, I was being dishonest about WHY I had made so much coffee, and then I immediately felt guilty about not being honest with him about it and confessed the real reason. This is me with honesty. Like it or leave it. I can’t lie and tell you I like the way your hair looks when I think it looks stupid. The look on my face will give me away every time anyway. This is a great thing when I have something nice to say. Everyone knows it is a sincere compliment, but…
This gets me in trouble with people who don’t see honesty as a virtue. To me, honesty is a top priority. I do not like dishonesty. I do not like false or fake or any of that. And maybe that’s the maintenance thing again. I don’t dye my hair. Takes too much maintenance. I don’t tell lies. It takes too much maintenance to keep up with it. I have a hard time tolerating people who look too perfect, act too perfect, have homes that are too clean and organized… UNLESS that is really WHO THEY ARE. If they genuinely ARE clean and organized people who can’t be sane unless things are tidy, then I have no problem with them… Because that makes them… imperfect.
I love imperfection because I know the list of my own faults is a mile long and when you’re not perfect, I feel better about how I’m doing in life. When you’re perfect, I’m a failure. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to be a failure.
I guess what I’m getting to here, is what is more important? Being honest or being perfect?
I take honesty every time, because when I try for perfection, I come up short… Every. Single. Time.
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