Honesty

To be honest means to be free of deceit and untruthfulness.  I like this idea of being free of deceit; it's more specific than 'tell the truth.'  To be honest means to be simple and unpretentious. 

It speaks of an attitude, not just a standard.  There are different kinds of honesty, too.  There is emotional honesty (being aware of and expressing our true feelings), intellectual honesty (saying what we truly think), and moral honesty (adhering to facts, avoiding deceit).

But, many of us have been raised to hide our emotions, to be polite rather than say what we think, and to deceive through omission while 'technically' telling the facts.  The habits of deception can be so ingrained, or we have become so used to distrusting ourselves, that we might not know how we really feel, what we really think, or what the facts really are.

-Thoughts from Amber Starfire