Why honesty?

This morning, I gave a presentation on honesty to new students at my school. It was such a difficult thing to present this topic. I personally feel that I haven’t been 100% honest in my life. It was hard, quite hard, both in preparation and delivery, but it’s gonna be much harder in the application. I realize that once I speak to the students about honesty they will watch me every day and I can’t imagine what they will think about me if they find me dishonest.

However, this task gives me an opportunity to look at myself. How honest am I? It’s the first question which came up when I prepared the presentation. I’m not a really good guy. I also live in a world of lies that can easily force me to be dishonest. I thought hard and I tried to find an answer whether I’m the right man to present this topic or not.

What went on afterwards was far beyond my presumption about myself. I found out that no matter how bad my past was, I had to give values to the life itself, more specifically to my students. I began to think about the future by thinking how I can contribute to this world.

Let’s begin now. We live in a very challenging world where many things are measured by what we have and what we don’t have. Frankly speaking, it’s all about wealthy, money, competition, etc. We forget that life is also about how to live it as it has to be and that we are all God’s creature who should create harmony in our life.

Harmony can be created by respecting each other and one of the ways to respect each other is by being honest. Honesty means being truthful in our thoughts, words, and actions. Being honest means choosing not to lie and cheat in any way although it’s not easy not to lie. We lie to avoid troubles, to look good to others, to hide behind failures, and also sometimes to avoid hurting somebody else’s heart.

Although, it’s very human and normal that sometimes we lie, we’d better try at our best to be honest. Honesty may hurt others, but it’s always better to tell the truth than to lie. Therefore, truth should be accompanied by affection and empathy. The nature of being honest is to create harmony in our life and harmony is always related to affection.

Let’s be honest for a better living. If it’s too difficult to be honest to others, start to be honest to ourselves first. We can never be honest to others without being truthful deep inside our heart. It’s not easy, but we can give it a try.  If we are honest, our character will always shine through. Listen to our heart and see what happens. God bless you all.