Tag Archives: telling the truth

Credibility

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Credibility: (n) the quality of being believable or worthy of trust

I suppose the most logical suggestion for gaining credibility is just refusing to lie.

Seems sensible. Here’s the problem:

You can’t get anyone to believe that you’re not lying.

And the more you insist you’re telling the truth or emotionally distraught you become, the more you look like an even worse liar.

Credibility is achieved by allowing the ideas you’ve fostered to prove themselves.

To have this happen, you must be willing to silently let time pass. That way, when it ends up that the things you spoke were accurate, faithful and honest, the human race around you can slow up long enough to respond, “Hey—you were right.”

If you don’t gloat over your veracity, they will gradually—and I say, very gradually—begin to assume that you are some strange alien who has come to Earth to expose the poison of “fibbing.”

But gaining credibility is never something that can be claimed, insisted upon, lobbied for or voted into office. When people realize that your “yes” actually means yes, and your “no” holds firm at no, then maybe—yes, maybe—they will start giving you points for credibility.

 

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Assuage

Assuage: (v) to make an unpleasant feeling less intensedictionary with letter A

Although the circumstances may vary, there are really only two paths of action that we can take in any given situation:

  1.  Am I going to deal with the reality as it exists in a truthful manner?
  2. Am I going to understand the reality and then make up my own rendition, which is more pleasing to my sensibilities?

We do it every day.

Things come up and we have a choice–do I accept my fault and involvement in the present fiasco, or am I desperately looking for ways to assuage my guilt?

It is so much a part of the human experience that other folks who love us will actually help us create a storyline which is more pleasing than the one presently being offered by circumstances.

I will not tell you that I have always pursued the path of truthful disclosure.

I would not be so foolish as to prophesy that going forward I will do so.

The best I can achieve is to admit to myself that both paths exist–and each and every time they come up, I willfully make a decision on my own, to either come clean or dirty up the back story.

Is there a difference?

Candidly, none of us would lie if we had not actually gotten by with it at one time or another. And certainly, the sensation of pulling off the fictitious explanation is so exhilarating that we may continue to do so to get the rush.

None of us are convinced that the truth will make us free. It not only seems unrealistic, it also appears to be downright inhuman.

Yet there is one abiding factor that cannot be escaped:

Confessing our faults is much preferable to denying them. Why? Because later we are cornered by our adversaries, who prove that we are not only transgressors, but liars.

So what will I do going forward, understanding that these two paths are constantly available to me in my dealings with others, and especially my own conscience?

I will try to tell the truth, remembering that the freedom it provides is the giddy spirit that does not need to avoid other people and other situations… in order to escape disclosure.

 

 

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