'Now, you listen here, and listen well: If I ever find you have been dishonest to me, dishonest about me, or dishonest about yourself, we're finished! You hear me? I won't lie to you: We're finished!' said the greatly agitated man.
I honestly cannot stand the thing, and it seems to me that dishonesty, the final item I would like to consign to room 101, is possibly the single biggest cause of unhappiness - greater even than imperialism, money and religion - in the world. I would perhaps even go so far as to say that it forms an intrinsic part of those three aforementioned items, and it is this that I see in them which has determined my feelings about them.
It is fairly difficult to describe, but it affects me so greatly that I hardly feel I'm fit to write at length about it. Although, I don't know why that is the case, for I don't think I've been treated particularly dishonestly, or brought up around dishonesty, but I suppose it is that I have always felt compelled, in everything I've done, to be honest and to do it with integrity; and that if I cannot do that, the thing is not worth doing.
I remember reading what Freud had to say about anxiety in his The Interpretation of Dreams (a book I still am yet finish). I cannot quote exactly, but I remember he wrote of it as occurring when one has a thought in their subconscious mind, which, before the thought has surfaced in their consciousness, they have already criticised and rejected as a useless thought. So, since reading this, I've always used that model when thinking about the anxiety from which I suffer, and have always equated it with a type of dishonesty. I mean, having such thoughts as perhaps designing to say 'good morning' to a family-member, but even that being subjected to this effect of anxiety, one gets to feeling that either saying 'good morning' isn't the honest thing to do, or that whatever it is I end up saying, if I accept the rejection of the idea to say 'good morning', isn't an honest thing to say. That may seem to be the greatest leap of logic, but I feel that anxiety can breed (a feeling of) dishonesty, and that dishonesty in turn can feed anxiety and let it fester. For someone so in love with honesty, this state becomes entirely crippling.
Would that we could rid the world of this dishonesty; perhaps as well would go anxiety and all such similar things from which we suffer in the mind.
Word of the Week
Dishonesty
dishonesty n. (pl. -ies) 1 a a lack of honesty. b deceitfulness, fraud. 2 a dishonest or fraudulent act.
Definition courtesy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary
