I am passionate about truth and when someone tries to lie to me, I can sense it. Though I know I cannot force someone to tell the truth, I also know I cannot believe their lie. 

    The Historical Lie

I can trace the history of the lie that made me ardent about the truth. When my mother told me the reason for my father’s death was that his heart had stopped, I knew intrinsically that her words were a lie.  Being told that my father was dead was hard enough. Not being told the truth about his death, that he’d ended his life, was all that much harder. 

 Her deliberate distortion caused me to feel an absolute wrath toward dishonesty from that day forward. 

I have no tolerance for lies or liars. Yet, I know I cannot let that passion for truth get the best of me. I cannot expect everyone to feel as strongly about the truth as I do. Speaking truth and living truth is my personal standard. 

 Living truthfully means living honestly, sincerely, morally and with frankness. These virtues all align with truthfulness. Lying, on the other hand, also has its standards to uphold. Deceit, hypocrisy, untruthfulness and disingenuousness align with untruthfulness. 

Whether we live up to truthfulness or untruthfulness, our habits become our standards.  If truthfulness becomes the norm for living, then dishonesty will feel foreign. If dishonesty becomes the norm, then truthfulness will foreign to us. 

I know more about how it feels to be lied to than to lie to others, but I also know that whether someone lies to me or I lie to someone else, dissonance within me occurs. It is similar to saying yes, while shaking our head no.  

It has been said that how we do one thing is how we do everything. Being truthful about everything begins with being truthful about one thing. 

Why bother being zealous for the truth? Truthfulness might not always be easy, but it won’t create internal discordance.