No more sugar coating.

Earlier last month one of my friends was murdered, it was a very sad experience for me especially because I feel like I contributed to his death. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t arrange for his death, neither am I a murderer, but his way of death could have been prevented, it was not an accident but something to be expected, I might sound so odd to expect someone’s death, but it’s true his way of living was likely to lead to death.

 I had known him for more than four years and he was a close friend, we did things together, both good and bad, but in the long run I decided not do the bad things but I allowed him to do both. I could have been true to him and tell him to change but it felt so hard ,I was scared he would avoid me, but where did that fear lead to?

Since then I have been thinking of how to make a positive impact on the lives of those around me, and today I got the answer, being honest.  This simply means saying the truth at all times regardless of the risk involved. Honesty is one of foundational basis of any relationship. Honesty bores, trust and confidence, it will make you feel secure around someone and for sure it will make you feel treasured and cared for.

Honesty can be observed in three dimensions, i.e. confession, confrontation and correction; I call this the 3Cs of honesty. Many relationships that I know have all the great attributes of love, passion, respect, romance and affection, care and all the good names we label them, but the truth is all these names are just phantom, they are all sweet, meaningless, empty names and until we learn to say the truth and say it without sugar coating it, then all those things we are seeking for in relationships will never come.

Have you ever done something wrong that it makes you sick inside? It eats you up, makes your blood boil and you can’t keep in inside any longer? Well I have been there many times and the only way to cool down the hit is let it out. Confessing what you did. This is the first C of honesty. When you are wrong, you don’t need to justify yourself. You might convince someone with the lie you formulate to cover up the mistake you did, but guilty is bright and will never be convinced.

There is nothing that has never been forgiven in this world and definitely you are not the first one to make a mistake. By confessing your mistakes to those you care about, proves your care, it shows your respect to them.  We men we have a tendency of hurting the feelings of our spouses then come with the flowers to make them forget. That’s foolish, women don’t forget and they don’t want to be convinced by the flowers all they are seeking for is the truth and if you think you are permitted to tell white lies all the time then soon you will grow color blind. 
Do you have those friends who are always coming to you for help, who will come to your house and make themselves at home, who will eat your food, drink all of your drinks  from the fridge and even personalize your remote control?  Well they are there and I know you have them, and if you are one of them then you need help. You keep saying ‘so and so can’t stop coming to you for help and so and so can’t stop disturbing you when you need a ‘Me time’ and blah! Blah! Blah!’ but stop for a minute and think, why are they always coming to you? Simple, it’s because you let them with an excuse that you are so scared of telling them the truth of how disturbed you feel every time they come.

We are always tolerating the things we hate for the name of care. We can’t confront our friends about their canning nature for the name of, ‘I don’t want them to get mad’. Well, you will become mad yourself; if are not honest, soon you will go mad. We have to confront our friends and tell them the things that we don’t like in them, it’s not because you despise them but because you care about your friendship. We always tell lies and pretend when we are afraid, afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie the thing that we fear grows stronger.

Every time we are looking for people to love, we always focus on how they look, their beautiful smile and everything physical about them, just to come to find out they were not as good as we thought. Everyone has a weakness beneath the colored skin that we see and that should tell you that perfection only exist in the word of the angels and God the father. The problem with us imperfect humans is that we know of our nature yet we pretend not to. Honesty involves correction. Telling others of their mistakes and showing them the better way if not the right way.

Sometimes we lie to people by telling them how elegant they are dressed yet your other ‘you ‘hold a complete different opinion. We tell our girlfriends how tasty the food they prepared tastes, but after that we sneak to the nearby cafeteria and grab some fast food, we are so scared of telling our friends about the importance of water 'on' the body, not just for drinking. You are afraid of telling your boyfriend of their ill-mannered behaviors at the dining table, just because they will be offended, but how are we helping them? Where are the honest people of  this world? Correcting the mistakes of our imperfection is nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s something to applause to and give a standing ovation to.

Remember, honesty pays however much it doesn’t seem to pay for some people, but for the sake of our relationships, we have to practice  honesty, confessing the dark secrets of our lives locked in our traumatized  hearts, confronting the characters of the ones we love and correcting their weakness to make them the persons we are proud of.  Truth is the only thing worth having, and in a civilized world like ours where reality is bad enough, the truth is the only thing that will make you unique, worthy and free. Say the truth and the truth shall set you free.

Wake up let us journey on.