Honestly

For many people today, honesty is not an assumption or an obligation, but a calculation, a risk-benefit analysis. The decision is made in a given case, whether to lie or tell the truth. There aren't many people anymore who would say that they are risking anything important - anything of their self, their integrity - by lying. Not when they stand to gain something they want. They consider that although they chose to lie now, for a compelling reason, they can always choose to be honest down the road, or "in general" - wherever there is no sufficiently compelling reason to lie.

They calculate only the momentary gain to be won by a lie, to steal a prize and hold it tight in a moment of triumph bargained for in bad faith. They do not count what is lost: faith itself. Not only the other's faith, but slowly and surely one's own capacity to act in good faith at all. And with it goes the ability to ever truly secure for tomorrow and forever, a love that is true. A love such as can only exist between two who are true to each other, and true with each other.

In the end, it isn't something you can choose: to be honest. It's something you start out as, and as life goes on you find that you either are or aren't. It is based on the total of what you've decided to do, decided to be. Decided to make yourself. An honest person still slips, fails, regrets the failure, perhaps feels tormented by it, probably tries to make an amends. No one is perfect - in honesty or in anything. But the person who calculates and lies for benefit on a case-by-case basis has gone in their soul quite beyond the possibility of being honest. They are only honest so far as honesty represents the path of greatest gain. They don't even recognize what they've become: self-inflicted damaged goods, of no good use to anyone, without honesty. Such a person is a hazard and a grave danger to anyone who still walks out into the world, wanting to trust.

Those of you who are honest, please be very careful. Look out for the ones who are honest only insofar as they lose nothing by it. Among virtues, honesty has become quaint, and is considered of no great moment in this world.