Honesty begats Trust

The truth is that the TRUTH is all there is. Honesty is a word and an idea that we talk about way too much and put into practice way too little. I would be willing to say that anyone who reads this can "honestly" say that they have not always told the truth. We catch ourselves many times lying to ourselves and others to achieve self-preservation. Wanting to be something other than who we are motivates us to be dishonest. The problem is that eventually you will have to come out of hiding if relationships with others continue to grow. In order for trust to be obtained, complete honesty must be present at the beginning. A relationship that started out with honesty and has grown to trust can still be jeopardized by one's dishonesty. When this occurs one must quickly come clean with the dishonesty if trust will ever be achieved in the relationship's future. Having a sense of trust in a relationship is a good thing. As children and young adults we want to be trusted with more and more freedoms from our parents. With romantic relationships one wants to trust the other and not be faced with looming jealousy. Friendly relationships count on trust to maintain mutual respect. So in order to maintain and grow trust in a relationship one must continuously test this relationship with honesty. Ralph Waldo Emerson said this:

"The highest compact we can make with another is "let there be truth between us two for evermore".

I know there are some who are scared of the truth of themselves and the fallout that will surely occur if they were to ever be completely honest in their relationships. However, you must know to realize full trust, complete honesty must prevail. In no way am I trying to make light of the difficulty of being completely and totally honest, because I know from experience that this is no easy task to bring the real you out and lay it all on the table seeing only then where the chips will fall.

First we must learn to be honest with ourselves so that we can grow to trust ourselves. Only then can we grow to accept the consequences that come along with our honesty.