Honesty

I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but I’ve used Shakespeare quotes lately on my home page.  The quotes from Shakespeare have become such a part of our world, that we often don’t know that many common-sense sayings are from him.

His common sense has guided us since the 1600’s.

Today, I used a quote on honesty.  Look to the right, and you’ll see it.  No legacy is so rich as honesty.  When I chose this quote today, I thought to myself, yes, this is now about me.  Part of my legacy is that I am honest.

That wasn’t always the case.  I was an only child.  Not having other children, I think, caused my parents to be unrealistic about what they could expect.  They tended to be very strict and have unrealistic expectations.

This, in turn, caused me to lie to them about what I did and where I went.  Lying as a teenager, became a way of life for me.  It started me on a path, where dishonesty, in my opinion, was acceptable.  That acceptance of lies led me to further dishonest in all areas of my life.

About 1983, I came to realize that this was not an acceptable way to live.  I made a decision that if I wanted good things in my life, I needed to clean up my life.  I needed to be as honest as I possibly could be.  It was hard at first.  Always telling the truth.  There were always those handy excuses like, well, those corporations screw people over all the time, everyone cheats on their taxes, who will ever know.

Who will ever know?  That’s a big one.  I will know. The God I believe in will know.  It will be my karma to have dishonesty in my life. I believe that what I put out there is what will be returned to me.  I don’t want dishonesty in any form in my life.

I believe that dishonesty poisons us spiritually, emotionally and physically.  It interferes with me receiving the good that God has for me.

I didn’t turn into an honest person overnight.  Whenever I have changed a behavior, I find that it takes time.  It is the two steps forward and three steps back that applies to me.  But I’ve done it.  It is now over 30 years since I made a decision to be an honest person, and I am.

I’m still not perfect at it, but I keep working at it.  I still don’t know what to do about those situations where a friend has a new dress that looks ugly, and she loves it.  I still try to be positive about the dress.  I try to say, things like, “wow, you really got one!” and smile a lot.  That is still cheating and not telling the truth.  I make sure not to cut those corners like that on the big issues.

I have to say that I am proud of myself for being an honest person, and the feeling I get from that is fabulous.

The art used in this blog is a page of seamless tiles made from one of my abstracts.  These tiles are what I was using to paint with my paintings in two previous blogs.  I’m Painting With My Paintings and More Paintings With My Paintings.