Yesterday I wrote that I want to be honest even if my honest opinion disturbs someone or offends others. Honesty is a very important value for me, I always say that it is one of my three principles: honest, direct and clear. But there are cases in which you have to ask yourself if it is the right thing to be honest. Imagine this situation: you have a guest in your home and you know, he is going to leave in half an hour. But in the last ten minutes he fully misbehaved. Will you tell him and make a big deal out of it or just wait until he goes and let grass grow over it?
Or another situation: you are invited to dinner and the host told you he would cook a great dish especially for you. He calls himself a specialist in it and promised that you would love it. It doesn’t contain any ingredient which you don’t like per se but still you don’t like the whole dish at all. After dinner your host asks you: So, how did you like it? What will be your answer?
If you tell him that it was horrible for you, he will be very sad, disappointed and will feel bad that you didn’t like it. So depending on the situation you might want to say ‘Very nice, thank you!’ and you make a person very happy in just a second. It is in your hand. But be careful! You might enthusiastically comment on your food with words like ‘Great, absolutely delicious! I never ate anything that good!’ and at the next occasion when you are invited your host will make the same dish again or even bring it as a special present when he is invited to your place for dinner. Honesty is not always easy, but not saying the truth can bring you in strange situations!
There is a Sutra which says ‘Satyam bruyat priyam bruyat’. If I translate it, it says: Say the truth, but say it in a sweet way. So you need to judge in each situation individually what you can do. And often you can find a way not to make the other person unhappy while you are still truthful. This should be our goal. Be honest with much love!
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Namaste – Thanks for posting this reminder. Always want to be honest, but have learned to temper this desire with gentleness. I like your saying that we should “Say the truth, but say it in a sweet way.”
Wow, you make it sound so easy. We tend to either keep quiet for fear of saying the wrong thing and upsetting people or what we do say comes out wrong……….thank you for this Swami
Ooh these are hard situations. But the Sutra says it all, I think. Tell the truth but be nice about it. And hopefully your friends will understand and do the same to you!
Regarding the photo: so cute! Sleeping beauties 🙂