Honesty

“Oh, honestly!”, she rolls her eyes.

“Are you for real?”, he stares incredulous at the vendor.

“Really?”, behind his newspaper, he lends half an ear to her early morning chatter.

“No way!!!!”, her shrill teenage voice pierces the mall din.

“You liar!”, she’s had enough of his shenanigans.

From our dialogs, it seems honesty is a rare commodity. So many of our common expressions imply dishonesty. Most of the times, we don’t even mean to imply someone is dishonest. When I try to think of a popular phrase that represents honesty I can thing of the expression “for sure” (yes, a rather dated expression) but that’s about it.


Sacca parami – truthfulness – is the 7^th Buddhist Perfection. Truthful is a subjective evaluation. Yesterday, on Beach Walks With Rox, she talked about cheating. She likes to cheat when she plays solitaire. Is Rox being dishonest? Not at all. She seems to be completely honest with herself with what she is doing, even though she is not playing by the rules, there is no deceit involved – no one gets hurt. That's the rub with truthfulness: no deceit, no hurting.

If we are truthful with ourselves and with others EVEN IF WE CHANGE THE RULES, we avoid a number of byproduct problems that might occur down the line. If we deceive, if we are not upfront and forthright, the repercussions can be quite serious.

In the Vientiane Times last week (or maybe the week before), there was an article about some Hmong refugees who were returned to Laos from Thailand. Although the subject of the article is one of a terrible situation, the anchor of the article I found slightly humorous in its delivery. The article begins with a Mr. Chou taking a second wife before consulting with his first wife. As a result, his first wife angrily (and rightly so) took their children and ran off to Thailand (bad idea). Naturally, they were arrested and detained in a refugee camp.

The article continues to talk about the deplorable conditions of the Hmong refugee camps and the suffering of it’s inhabitants. Then, in the last paragraph, a sort of moral to the story is delivered. The article states something to the effect of ‘had Mr. Chou first consulted his wife before taking a second, all of this could have been avoided.’


Aside from the fact that anyone foolish enough to have more than … uh… anywhere between zero and one wife, I think the story provides a good example of how dishonesty can put you and others into a very tough spot. Try the opposite, try honesty, and you may discover you and your wives are all very happy cheating at solitaire together.