Honesty: Where Art Thou?

Or: Do these pants make me look fat?

Have you ever been confronted with a question that you would prefer not to answer? Like the one I have in the subtitle? What do you do? Say yes and accept the consequences, or “distort” what you think? Perhaps some would call it a white lie.

How about a third option, as in massaging the reaction? “I think those other ones look better on you..better color.” Or some version of this.

So yes, there are more palatable answers to acknowledge the reality but in what I describe, we are looking at a personal situation that affects the two individuals. What about when your response impacts more than one, in fact, dozens, millions of people? To what extent can you, YOU, be authentic and respond with the actual facts as you know them?

That incredible computer, the versatile organ we call the brain, is capable of calculating the odds of the reaction from the other, match the emotional impact, balance out the cost of truth-telling versus “distorting” and produce an instantaneous response, working in data from one’s past experience. Amazing, isn’t it? That exact same ingenious brain can also process what happened, plus the reaction from the outside and come up with self-knowledge that can guide behavior in the future.

And that, Dear Reader, is where some fail to go further - the ability to learn or to shut out the process of evolving. None of us is perfect; we all make mistakes. Hopefully those do not cause major harm to others. It is a conscientious human being who can acknowledge the mistake and look for ways to make up for it. Many a relationship is revived and strengthened when that happens. Yet many refuse to do so and really, lose in the end.

In 1955, psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham developed the Johari Window, so called by combining their names. it consists of 4 quadrants in a square:

Open (Arena) - What you know about yourself and what others know about you.

Blind (Blind Spot) - What others notice about you but you do not recognize about yourself.

Hidden (Façade) - What you know about yourself that you do not share with others.

Hidden (Façade) - What you know about yourself that you do not share with others.

Unknown (Unknown) - What neither you nor others know about you such as latent abilities or untested reactions under pressure. (info@johariwindow.net)

The sizes of these quadrants make up the total picture. If the Open quadrant is large, we see a transparent person, if the Blind and Hidden ones are large, we have met someone who is hard to get to know.

Especially in these times of turmoil, it is critical to be aware of our own actions, how we impact others, what consequences our behavior will cause, and in all those, be protective with self-care as well as connecting and standing with others.

When we overlay our emotional makeup on the quadrants, we may see a person who is so driven by insecurities that no positive learning can take place. It creates that dead end street where the maladaptive behavior perseveres.

I invite all of you to maintain the hope that there are more of those with a large Open

quadrant to get through the current chaos that taxes our need to stay anchored in reality, persevering and evolving.

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power. — William James, American Philosopher.