When I was younger, I did not understand the nature of honesty. I was in so many layers of denial that I didn’t even comprehend the word “honesty”, although I suppose I thought I did. I suppose I thought I was honest, but I had nothing to compare it to. Nor did I understand the difference between truth and honesty, and there is a difference.
Many, many years ago, when I was first in AA when I was in my late teens, I knew a man who talked about honesty. He would say, “You have to get gut-level honest to be sober.” He was a vet from the Vietnam War, and he had had a hard life, but he was sober in AA. At the time, I guess I thought he probably had a lot to get honest about, more so than I. Still, when he would say that, I would feel around in my stomach using my brain, the only way I knew at the time. Then I would come to the conclusion that I had no idea what he was talking about. This always mystified me.
Years later, a different man in AA talked about “out-loud” honesty. By then, I myself was sober, and had been for a few years. I had been to several years of counseling, and by then, I knew what out-loud honesty meant.
Both men were right. We do have to be gut-level honest. It’s our feelings that lead us to things like alcoholism. Getting honest about our feelings frees us. We cannot deal with feelings that we stuff in our gut and try to ignore. Then they only come out sideways.
The out-loud part is very important for a different reason. The biggest problem with feelings that live only in my head is that they get all out of proportion. They get too big, or they get too small. ‘Out-loud’ works in two ways. Sometimes, I confide in someone who provides words of wisdom for me. But equally often, as the feelings come of my mouth, even I can see them right-sized. It’s a simple thing that I cannot explain, yet experience teaches me that the method is magical.
I’ll give you a small example. Once I had a dear, dear friend. Unfortunately, one day I was struggling with some idea that people liked her better than they liked me. I was jealous, jealous of my friend whom I loved dearly. In another day, I would deny this feeling. I would run away from it as fast as I could. It’s not a pretty feeling, nor is it a feeling one ‘should’ have about a close friend. But I was growing, and I was learning to see these things. Then I told another friend about it. As soon as I said it, I realized how silly it was, and that feeling completely ceased to have power over me. I was free of it.
So gut-level and out-loud honesty are important. I can’t deal with feelings until I know what they are, and I can’t deal with feelings until I make them right-sized.
Truth is another matter entirely. I used to think that there was only one Truth, and that everybody should see that Truth. Now I know that truth is an individual thing. What is true for me may not be true for you. We all have been shaped by a different experience, and our feelings are different, and our memories are different, and so our truth is different. It cannot be any other way.
The book I wrote was gut-level honest. I could not possibly have been more honest, it came from a deep, true place. Other people in my family see things differently. They say, “That’s not the way it happened.”
I had several moments of severe self-doubt about this. I thought, “Maybe everything I wrote is made up in my head. Maybe none of it is true.” I really , really struggled with that. After a time though, after reaching deep down in my gut again, I returned to the idea that I absolutely know the book is 100% authentic. It was gut-level honest on every level. Whether or not it is “true” is a subjective question.
Then I had a few moments of pity for my sister. How sad for her that she can’t recognize authenticity. My sister hasn’t the slightest clue what it means to be gut-level honest, to be authentic, nor how to say her gut-level feelings out loud. For that matter, she has no one she could be gut level honest with in her life even if she wanted to do it. How sad for her, how distant she is from her real self.
On the other hand, I don’t pity my sister for her memories of our childhood being different than mine. That is not because she doesn’t know how to be honest. It’s just because her memories are different. There is no conflict here, no need to negotiate which one of our opinions, which set of memories, is true. They are both true. Her story is true for her, and my story is true for me.
Truth and honesty may seem like the same things, but they are not. I do my best to understand what is true wherever possible with varying degrees of success, but what I am sure I always know is how to be authentic.
Those stories, the authentic ones, are something you can hold on to.
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