Truthful or Truth Full?

Well, am a mind reader. I can tell you exactly what’s on your mind this weekend! Lies! Lies! Lies! I mean Swami’s post on Lies. Now if there are other lies on your mind, I gain some bonus points. Swami limited the comments to a 100 words, so here I am with a post! Just kidding, I only felt like it.

To tell you the truth, last year I thought about writing a post on being truthful in today’s world and to tell you another truth, I don’t think this post will have much wisdom. I am writing it to gather my thoughts.

Truth is quite a tough topic, when I first came across Swami, I think, at some point I decided to be very truthful, but at convenience. Some things matter so much to us that we are very willing to slide it under the carpet, which actually inspired the title of this post. Are we truthful or are we truth full? We can be full of truth but it doesn’t mean that we are truthful. When I took up truth, I would be very mindful with my speech, because believe me, it was easier to just be truthful and I remember even telling people ‘I am very truthful’. But what about our subtle actions, which sprout from lack of truthfulness? From lack of morality? I have been guilty of quite a few of those, although feeling guilty never serves a purpose really. The idea is to learn from it all and not repeat the same mistake again.

Are we still being truthful when we take a bigger share of the cake and give the other person a smaller share? Are we being truthful when we gossip? Are we being truthful when we ‘share secrets’? And most importantly, one place where I feel many of us may falter is when we let go of our own thinking and simply trust others to make decisions for us. We believe that they must know what they are doing and just follow on. But they are not to blame, we are. Now, don’t go on a guilt trip, because everything which life presents us with, is an opportunity for growth. 

So here are some other questions which I am unable to grasp, maybe they are just petty, who knows! 

• If I tell someone “See you tomorrow” and never see them, did I lie?
• If we are very well aware of someone’s actions, should we tell them we know, or let it be? Is it petty?
• If we promise to go somewhere and don’t, is it a lie?
• If we tell someone we will call them back, but we don’t is it a lie?
• And if we tell someone we are okay when we are not, is it a lie?

(Don’t beat yourself up trying to answer these questions, it’s all just food for thought)

Over the years, I realised that we can use broader terms, such as ‘I might call you back’ or ‘I don’t know yet’, but these are lies too, especially if we know very well that we will never call them and we know very well what we will be doing! Hence why I say we may be truth full but not truthful.

If someone says: 

Hey what’s for dinner tonight?
And you answer: I always struggle on Saturdays or I never know what to cook.

However, you very well know that you’re about to have pizza, surely that was truth full, because you do struggle but was it truthful!?

It is very hard to be completely truthful in today’s world, hence why minimising social interactions, if possible, is beneficial. But at the end of the day, if we know that we are never ever hiding anything from the Divine, then I guess we are being truthful. And after having the courage to seek forgiveness and promise not to repeat our actions, the next step is only to be truthful to the Divine in the other person! Although they may only be truthful to their inner Raktabija! Just kidding.

So did this post serve any purpose? Who knows! But hey ho! That was a truth full post. Truthful too? Who knows!

PC