All my life, for as long as I can remember, I have had a burning desire to know the truth.

It is one of my deepest passions, and for most of that time, the dominant one as well. I felt as if, somehow, my job in the world was to pierce all the layers of confusion and illusion, find the real truth, and then tell people about it.

But the truth is not a gentle thing, and I think of myself as a gentle person. I have lived my life with the innate assumption that the truth is always the best thing in all occasions, that you are always better off hearing the truth rather than comforting lies.

And I still believe that. But I am beginning to see its limits.

Sure, for someone like me, who has been a fearless delver into the deepest, darkest, most disturbing layers of human reality in my never-ending and unquenchable thirst for the truth, there is very little that you can say to me which is true that I cannot accept.

My therapist is constantly amazed at how readily I accept the truth of painful revelations and how willing I am to deal with the harshest of truths in my quest to heal myself. But I am not the sort of person who can consciously deny the truth of something which rings true to me. And because I have this lifelong instinct to lunge for the truth the moment I see it, I sometimes leap vast crevices that lead deep into the wounded flesh of my broken spirit that others might have to labour through the hard way.

So I suppose therapy works a little faster for me because of this self-honesty. But I digress.

For a fearless philosopher like me, honesty is always the best policy. I am a very understanding person, so much so that people are often surprised by how readily and non-judgmentally I can accept, understand, and sympathize with their deepest, darkest secrets.

But other people have more elaborate psychological defenses than I, and do not live outside Plato’s Cave like I do, and so the truth, especially in the concentrated form I usually deliver it, can very well do them a lot more harm than good.

Sometimes, a lie is the moral thing to do. Like in movies, where a character is very definitely going to die or at least is very gravely injured, and people tell them “You will be fine. It’s not as bad as it seems. You just relax and we will have you up and out of here in no time. ”

This is quite clearly a lie, or at least, misleading. But I have no problem with that, because it is not like the truth will do this person any good anyhow, and the last thing they need is more fear, stress, and panic. The best medicine, in that case, is to lie.

And this principle applies to the rest of life as well. I have been a fool and a pig to imagine that my deeply oracular truths are diamonds beyond price that anyone should be happy to get. I have let the arrogance of the intellect spill into personal arrogance about what is good for others, which just happens to be what I feel like doing anyhow.

Always a red flag, that.

Now I am not claiming that I have been a brutally blunt bulldozer all my life. I have not. I am, largely, a fairly sensitive, sweet, compassionate fellow who puts a very high premium on the ability to navigate the waters of diplomacy and discourse without stepping on people’s toes.

The kind of connection you can make with others if you have the poise and skill to listen well and give people the kind of help they need is, to me, priceless beyond all measure. I often feel humbled and privileged that I could do that for someone, that they could let me in and I could do them good, even if it’s just by lending a sympathetic ear.

So I am no brute. But I still feel I have inadvertently hurt and/or alienated people all my life with my very sharp and piercing perceptions of the truth.

Whether or not I am “right” or not is unimportant. Everyone thinks they are right, myself included. The issue at hand is whether that truth at that moment was the morally right thing to say. And I think that, many times in my life, it has not been.

And I am someone who takes ethics and responsibility very, very seriously. Possibly to a fault.

So I have to ask myself : what is more important? Being absolutely and utterly honest and truthful, as if one is expecting to be rewarded for having the right answer?

Or being less than completely honest, maybe even slightly misrepresenting yourself, in order to get along with others and do the least harm in the world that you can?

This is not an easy issue with me. I have rather naively acted like my opinions are the same as anyone else’s, and so when I am asked about X, I give my honest opinion.

But they are not the same. My opinions stem from deep analysis and perceptions honed over decades. They are stark, strange, and terrible to behold for a lot of people. Often they will simply not understand because it is too far out of their experience and they lack even the start of how to get a grip on what I am saying to them.

But even if they do have an inkling, it is nothing like what they know, and they, rightly so from their point of view, view me as a strange and dangerous person best left alone.

Final result : I feel rejected and humiliated and alienated, and historically, I am left naively thinking “What did I do to deserve that? ”

Well now I know, and I can start on the journey towards correcting my excesses.

This will not be easy.

But it has to be done if I am to connect with others the way I wish to do.