Proust Questionnaire (Part 2 - Truth)

In my last post I talked about the Proust questionnaire, and how for the first question I decided that my favorite virtues were compassion and truth. For what it's worth, here are some thoughts on truth, and the relationship between truth and honesty. Incidentally, I wrote this earlier in the day when I was far less frazzled, so I hope it's slightly more readable than the last post...

 Truth and honesty are not the same, though their meanings are often conflated. Honesty is a trait which depends on others; you ask me a question, and if I do not wish to deceive you then I'll give an honest answer. Honesty is something that is relatively straightforward. Truth, on the other  hand, is something that we must find within ourselves. Unlike honesty, truth is something which we decide for ourselves and then project externally. In that sense, truth is perhaps closer in meaning to authenticity than it is to honesty. After all, it is possible to be honest without being truthful:

"What did you do last night?"
"I stayed at home."

A perfectly honest answer. And yet, it contains no truth. It tells us nothing about our true self; our thoughts, actions, feelings. This is not our fault, of course. We're guided by social norms and conventions which state that truth is a little uncomfortable. I'm not talking about prudish censorship here:

"What did you do last night?"
"I ate junk food for dinner, followed by a massive shit, watched internet porn for an hour and fell asleep on the couch in my own filth."

See, that's excessively honest and out of the norms of social norms- but again, nothing truthful has been said.

No, what I admire is real truth; conveying who you are with integrity and being utterly unashamed of judgement about who you are as a person.

Cheers Brenda, you said it better than I could have done.