Honesty

Phillippe Leone, Unsplash

As deep as it goes.

“ Honesty is reached through the doorway of grief and loss. Where we cannot go in our mind, our memory, or our body is where we cannot be straight with another, with the world, or with our self.

Every human being dwells intimately close to a door of revelation they are afraid to pass through. Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth.

The ability to speak the truth is as much the ability to describe what it is like to stand in trepidation at this door, as it is to actually go through it and become that beautifully honest spiritual warrior, equal to all circumstances, we would like to become.” — David Whyte

Surviving day to day, we hardly notice the compromises and negotiated settlements we accept that don’t quite measure up to truth. We adapt, we learn to ignore and suppress the effects of lies and half truths as our gorge rises in rebellion. We become trained to the rules of our family, our society, even if we feel violated.

That’s why I wanted to be an artist of some sort, because I suspected there was a deeper life to be uncovered. Being an artist was not making pretty things, for me, it was making true things. On the surface lived the social animal, circumscribed by routine and…