Wholly honest answers are nearly extinct.
In our extremely politically correct world, everything is hyper-caveated and over-qualified which dilutes it beyond any potential significance. As such, we often speak words absent any real position and provide shallow feedback. This generally keeps us from actively causing harm or creating controversy, but the passive implications are severe.
Left with no real feedback, the majority of the population suffers from delusions of grandeur, unaware of our own inadequacies. Those who require, and may well positively respond to correction, never receive it and are instead relegated to increasingly insignificant positions to their own surprise. We lie and conjure up alternative reasons why they can’t participate, reassuring ourselves we are being humane, but in reality our efforts to spare ourselves a difficult conversation are far more sinister. Soon they are left no recourse but to fade into oblivion. If only someone had the courage to be honest with them.
“Quick, God, I need your helping hand!
The last decent person just went down,
All the friends I depended on gone.
Everyone talks in lie language;
Lies slide off their oily lips.
They doubletalk with forked tongues.”
In this Psalm we are at once the victim and the antagonist. We feel alone and are frustrated at the dearth of nebulous feedback we receive. However, we propagate this same derision with our own reluctance to bring honest answers forward and promulgate truth. It’s a cycle we need to break.
Like you, I often deal with challenging people at work. One of these challenging people kept interjecting themselves into our group and work area without so much as a warning. Our interactions with said individual were taxing, tiresome, and patently a distraction. We brainstormed strategies to correct this behavior and developed a menu of creative and theoretically effective means by which to accomplish this. Sadly it wasn’t until the final suggestion that one wiser than I suggested we have the honest, difficult conversation with them. That was the correct answer.
More than just a longing to be placated, we all have an inherent yearning for truth. When we hear real truth we are enraptured by the authority the speaker brings and compelled to action. Let us show our love for others by offering truly honest answers, not in spite, but in the spirit of caring for and developing them. Some of these conversations will be difficult, but both you and the recipient might just be refreshed by the honesty.