The Consistency Of Personal Honesty, Or, What, Why, Who And Shut Up.


It’s a very difficult thing to know yourself.  You can know things about you that other people don’t know, you can have an understanding of how other people see you.  You can convince yourself that you’re doing things for this reason and that and that those motivations are as pure as the driven or as muddied as, I dunno, the Mississippi or something.  But that’s not you, that’s a collection of parts of your own personal history, of external perspectives and an excuse you’ve applied to appear more palatable to the world outside your head.  It’s not what you are, it might be a clue as to why, but that’s different.  
No one knows who you really are except you.  It’s perhaps a sad truth, but a truth never the less, and truth is very much the crux of the thing.  You have to be incredibly, painfully, unerringly honest with yourself about everything you’ve done, are doing and intend to do.  Not always a pleasant thing – very rarely in fact – but without that honesty, and a consistency that goes along with it, you aren’t really you, you’re a reaction to everything, and everybody, else.  Around about now I expect you’re wondering where this has come from, you’re thinking, ‘hang on, a few days ago I was reading about celebrity endorsement, a piece written in – unless I’m mistaken – a somewhat tongue in cheek tone, and now this?’  Well, when you’re writing something that is going to display rather a lot of your inner self to complete strangers, even in the name of entertainment,  you start to get rather interested in who the Hell you actually are.
Say you’re acquainted with someone who is horribly immoral, who lies and twists things so that they get what they want – as an example let’s say they get violent when drunk or use people for their own gain.  Your relationship with that person isn’t who you are, but it does reflect on how people see you.  They’re completely different things, but the fact that you are willing to associate with such a person does speak volumes of a facet of your character.  Maybe you don’t care as long as you aren’t personally negatively affected, maybe it makes you feel like a better person by comparison, maybe you simply feel the need for the company, believing that the numbers of your group are inferior enough as it is.  But you should – at the very least – have queried your own logic.  I have more respect for the man who knowingly deceives for his own gain, who admits as much when caught out, than I do for the man who has created a fantasy for himself in which he isn’t the villain, in which he has acted purely, in which others have tarnished his image unfairly.  Or her.  If you’re going to be a shit, fine, be a shit. But don’t you dare try to tell the world that you’re misunderstood, because you’ve been understood very well, you just don’t like what you see in the mirror.  If you’re not comfortable with the consequence, don’t do the action.  If you think you’re not the sort of person who’d do something like that, don’t convince yourself that you’re not responsible after the fact.  And if you did do it, and you know full well why, then feel no shame in admitting it.  It’s always been you, and no matter what everyone else thinks to the contrary, it’s still you.  It’s not like you can escape that.
Ok, blah blah, I know, and partly this is an exploration of my own desire for, and admiration of, consistency and constant, perpetual honesty.  What can I say, I’m horribly self involved.  The clue is that you’re reading a personal blog, such is my narcissism.   I was recently questioned as to what I valued consistency in, what it was I thought should be constant in a person.  I’ve always known that universal truth was important to me, and that I personally extend that into some parts of the individual, but the consistency part is harder to nail down.  Consistent consistency is probably in there somewhere, that someone who knows what or who they are maintains that persona and remains one thing.  This flies in the face of the earlier example, where knowing a bad person doesn’t make you bad, because I believe this to be both true and nonsense.  I think it matters how and why you justify that decision, rather than what the decision actually ends up being.  You can argue that it’s not important, and maybe to you it’s not, but the only way to be happy dissecting your you, and to have others come along for the ride is to know.  Even if you can’t explain how you do.
Basically can you all just try to be a bit more honest about why you do stuff.  To yourself will do, because from that it will become clear to others.  You’re selfish, and that’s ok.  You’re vain and shallow and arrogant.  You’re self loathing, you’re manipulative and unsure, you’re confident, you’re submissive and certain.  Words used to describe your motivations are loaded with connotations both negative and positive, and none of them matter as long as you know, as long as you accept which is which and admit if asked.  People say they don’t care what other people think, but the outward perception of your inner self isn’t irrelevant, because other people do exist, meaning that you only really exist – socially, in an interactive way – because of those other bastards, and that interaction only has worth if it is as open and honest as it can be on both sides.  That’s the consistency I seek, I guess, the constant reality that I want to project and to receive from others.  The real difficulty is in explaining all this lucidly, as I have illustrated by explaining it all poorly.  No, scratch that, the real difficulty is in explaining it lucidly and making it all funny at the same time, which should, at this point in the post, be painfully clear.  What do you think you think about it?

Of course, it’s worth bearing in mind that all this comes from a man who had a Sherbet Dib Dab for dinner.  And don’t worry, the next one will be about something silly, like the belief that everyone should be allowed a gun or the idea that anything really matters.

Post a Comment

0 Comments