{"id":168,"date":"2014-10-19T20:42:34","date_gmt":"2014-10-19T20:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markcrobinson.com\/?page_id=168"},"modified":"2024-04-09T20:36:21","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T20:36:21","slug":"am-i-being-honest","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/markcrobinson.com\/am-i-being-honest\/","title":{"rendered":"Am I being Honest?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u201cYou\u2019d never hurt me, would you?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I cradled you in my lap in the overstuffed chair. The small of your back was pressed against\u00a0me. I remembered how firm the muscles on either side of your spine felt when I rubbed oil on them the other night. They responded to my touch. Your whole body responded to my touch.<\/p>\n<p>You looked into my eyes, deeply as you always do. You left your eyes completely clear for me. I could see as deeply as I had the courage to look. The woman, the girl, the teacher, the courtesan, the mother, and daughter, the goddess\u2026. they were all there, asking me to be kind and needing me to be honest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHonesty,\u201d though, had recently twisted in my grasp and become nearly incomprehensible.<\/p>\n<p>There was a time when I believed that honesty was as simple as telling the truth. Of course I didn\u2019t always tell the truth. Tell the boss he\u2019s an idiot? Tell my sweetheart she <em>does<\/em> look fat today? \u201cYes Officer, I knew I was speeding but I thought you\u2019d still be at the doughnut shop.\u201d But I didn\u2019t lie to myself and that was, perhaps, most important. \u201cI don\u2019t <em>rationalize<\/em>,\u201d I thought, as I explained to myself why I was telling this lie.<\/p>\n<p>When my lover asked me if I loved her, I told her that I did. I told her that I loved her from the bottom of my heart as she turned her naked body toward me, gently spread her legs, and invited me inside. \u201cOf course I love you. I always will,\u201d I whispered, with the last few syllables lost in the throes of her tangled hair.<\/p>\n<p>My business associates have always appreciated my honesty. I\u2019ve heard it said that I\u2019m the kind of person that has the courage to say \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d They trust me; as well they should because, indeed, I have their best interest in mind (as long as I am getting paid.)<\/p>\n<p>But when I look \u2018my\u2019 knowledge I see several kinds.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The things I know from personal experience. I can always tell the truth about that. Does it hurt to hit your head against a wall? Yes.<\/li>\n<li>The knowledge I\u2019ve gained from others. If I speak the truths I have been taught then I am being honest, but am I being accurate?<\/li>\n<li>The things I believe. I believe that plants feel pain. That\u2019s my truth, but is it <em>the<\/em> truth?<\/li>\n<li>The things I only <em>think <\/em>I know. Should I wait until I understand, fully, what love is before I tell you that I love you? Tell me what love is and I\u2019ll tell you if I love you. \u201cWait! Don\u2019t leave!\u201d<\/li>\n<li>That which I don\u2019t know. But even there is a gray area. There\u2019s so much I could know but hide from. I don\u2019t want to know about starving children living down the street, cruelty, and my own darkest corners.<\/li>\n<li>Then there is the unknown unknown. The facets of the infinite universe I can\u2019t imagine \u2013 I am not even aware that I don\u2019t know them. \u201cTell me the truth, my friend, what is the universe thinking about?\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The purpose of honesty, I have realized, is to invite people into the same world &#8212; to share the same \u2018present\u2019 &#8212; to truly be together. If I tell you that I love you and, indeed, all I want is to make love to you, then your world is quite different from mine. In yours, you are deeply loved. In mine, you are fucked. We are not on the same planet.<\/p>\n<p>This means that if I tell you the truth and you misunderstand, then honesty has not happened. Whether because I spoke poorly or you listened poorly doesn\u2019t matter. If I tell you \u201cI can\u2019t commit\u201d because I am afraid and you hear, \u201cI don\u2019t love you enough\u201d because you\u2019ve been used in the past &#8212; then are we together in the same moment?<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cYou\u2019d never hurt me, would you?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I want to tell you how deeply I love you but I know you\u2019ll misunderstand and hear that I want to possess and control you. I want to treasure your heart and cherish your soul but I\u2019m afraid you\u2019ll hear a promise that I\u2019m not prepared to make. Will I hurt you? Yes, my love, I will hurt you because every marriage ends in death or divorce. Because if bliss is Heads then pain is Tails and our coin flashes blindingly in the sun as it spins in the air.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve never loved or been loved like this before. It\u2019s different this time. I\u2019m different. She\u2019s different.<\/p>\n<p>Is that the truth?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cYou\u2019d never hurt me, would you?\u201d I cradled you in my lap in the overstuffed chair. The small of your back was pressed against\u00a0me. I remembered how firm the muscles on either side of your spine felt when I rubbed oil on them the other night. They responded to my touch. Your whole body responded [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markcrobinson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/168"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markcrobinson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markcrobinson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markcrobinson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markcrobinson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/markcrobinson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171,"href":"https:\/\/markcrobinson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/168\/revisions\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markcrobinson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markcrobinson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markcrobinson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}