“Let truthfulness and courtesy be your adorning”
Often, very much I like to believe that if some people are not truthful, whatever its measure and severity, one of the reasons is that perhaps they think to tell and convey the truth and to be frank and straightforward would not be polite and considerate. Of course there are many other reasons which dictate and mislead us to tread a path other than that of truthfulness—and frankly if such deviation is conducted knowingly and with a conscious and persistent will, in the highest essence and reality the measure and reason of it is actually irrelevant. In that case, whether it is a sharply distant deviation from the right path, or just a clever twist off the road, a “white one” as is often entitled, to a fairly polished and refined conscience and in the silence of its inner conversation with its own mind and heart, it is the same unhealthy substance. Within the whirlpool of far too grandiose and exceeding material cravings and with colorful and loud voices and sounds in our relentlessly imbalanced, one-sided advancements and oblivious over-growths, this matter—truthfulness—may shy away from its crucial appeal and seem just a “thing” of the past; when, on the contrary, this is a one trait which is indispensable and should be inseparable from every individual and collective development and growth, whatever the age and status, however the circumstances and times. Without it nothing else will really work—and it doesn’t; only going from bad to worse and more, by every passing day.
“Truthfulness is the foundation of all the virtues of the world of humanity”—without a foundation there cannot be a safe building, a sheltering edifice and a secure and lasting tower. Likewise, for an interested thinking mind it may not seem an exaggerated notion that should humans be lacking in this golden virtue, they will yet be moving and alive, but only without human nobility. If a house may have a crack in its foundation—it is logical to accept that it may not collapse at once, however the fact that there remains a crack, makes it a subject to such eventual prospect if nothing be done about it in a long term; as the crack opens up bigger over time and ultimately causes its demolition and fall. Similarly, while it could be accepted that a minor ‘untruthfulness’, conducted out of ignorance and being just an innocent moral mishap, could be overlooked and forgotten—a conscious one that keeps coming back in intervals, would certainly be taken by a perceptive mind and tuned conscience as an indication of a serious crack in a human character and the molding agents which bind his or her senses and powers; a defection which if not treated and fixed, precarious and damaging it will grow and eventually crush away the good and noble, at times so silently that would blind even him and her of realizing how far down he and she has fallen.
Considering a right way to convey a truth, appropriately choosing a best time and circumstance to do so, and then matching sincerely and with prudent care those considerations to the condition, capacity and state of the hearer and receiver of the truth, one should utter it with a verbal eloquence or in writing with the proper movement of one’s pen. These considerations are the elements of wisdom. To be aware and mindful of the rightness of our purpose and always thinking before we speak, sincerely motivated and sensitively conscious of the rights and dignity, innate value and potential nobility of every human being—our hearer and ourselves included of course—is that brilliant finesse which is a magic blend of wisdom and compassion; it is clothing the genuine and unaltered beauty of truth in the garment of propriety and courtesy, kindliness and brevity—through words, and as applicable and fitting better even in action.
If interested please visit my bilingual Chinese and English blog:
Timeless Treasures: Words with Meanings
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