Honest Conversations

I feel like everyday conversations would go a lot differently if we all said what we were thinking and were honest.

I find myself zoning out often times when people are talking to me and they will then ask me a question or wait for my input and I’ll have to scramble for something to say instead of being honest and saying, “Sorry, I was thinking about boys and zoned out”.

I do this because I don’t want people to think I’m a bad listener and I definitely don’t want them to know that I was actually thinking about.

Sometimes I will be asked a question that I don’t quite understand and I will talk in circles to come up with an answer that is even more confusing than the initial question, instead of just saying, “I’m sorry, I really don’t understand what you are asking. Could you please explain or rephrase?”

I do this because I don’t like to not be good at something or for people to think I’m dumb, so I try my hardest to look like I’m not and probably end up looking worse than I would have if I just asked for an explanation.

I even do this in relationships. When I’m really just not interested in someone, yet they keep pursuing me, I just don’t have the heart to say “I’m sorry, thank you for your time but I’m just not interested”. Instead I just keep sending short responses hoping that they will eventually get the hint.

There is obviously a fine line between where it’s appropriate to be truly honest and when it is probably best to white lie a bit, especially if you were zoning out and thinking about your ex-boyfriends hair in the middle of the meeting. But for the most part, I think a little more honesty in conversations could go a really long way. 

I know I’m not alone in any of this, I know we stray from the truth because people fear the truth and some are too sensitive to handle the honesty. But I think it’s time we take ourselves back to kindergarten when we learned that "honesty is the best policy". Because honestly, it is.  

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