Be truthful to yourself is a prerequisite for any sustainable relationship. Truthfulness has been the bedrock between parties from the beginning of time. William Shakespeare writing about truth and honesty in the famous play, Hamlet, wrote, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” Shakespeare assured his listeners that if they were true to themselves, they would not be false to others. Today, you and I live in a time when the ethical behavior of being truthful has its limitation and it appears to be a thing of the past because there are few ramifications for the lack thereof.
Our society has evolved from a time when a hand shake served as a promise to an era where lies and deceitfulness abound. We have developed a tolerance for the untruth. No professional setting should be excluded from the ethical behavior of truthism. In fact, one should expect truth in the home, with your private physician, the clergy, the car dealership and your elected officials.
Being truthful in all thing requires a high level of integrity because it is the quality of being honest. It is doing the right thing even when no one is watching you. It may cost you to do the right thing but it will cost you more to abandon your principles. Like a bird hatching an egg, it did not lay, so are the people who scheme, cheat, and are untruthful just to gain an advantage. When their lives have come to the finish line, they will discover the supreme truth – and it will be clear they were fools.
Golfing legend Davis Love has a great story about being truthful. In 1994 Love called a one-stroke penalty on himself during the second round of the Western Open. He moved his marker out of the path of another player’s putting line, then later he couldn’t remember if he’d moved his ball back to its original spot. Since he wasn’t certain, he gave himself an extra stroke and that one stroke caused him to be eliminated from the tournament.
The week before the 1995 Masters he qualified by winning a tournament in New Orleans. Later, Love was asked how he would have felt if he had missed the Masters because of calling a penalty on himself. Davis Love replied, “the question is how would I feel if I had won and spent the rest of my life wondering if I had cheated.”
In the words of the Lord there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs. So Never Give Up! Never Give Up! Never Give Up!
By Chaplain Ghosten
chaplain@lhp.net
