What if?

There’s a group of people who have committed themselves toradical honesty.  The idea is, they willbe honest, and even brutally honest, in all they say and do.  Apparently, if their wife asks them if thisdress “makes my butt look big,” and it does, they will answer “Why yes honey,yes it does.”  Or if their wife asks thequestion every husband dreads: “do you think she is attractive?”, and they do,they will answer accordingly.  Yowzers!

Lately I have been studying the 10 commandments and the 9^thone is essentially the prohibition against lying.  I do not consider myself a liar and at timeshave even taken this belief to extremes like the people mentioned above.  But in lieu of so many recent public andharmful lies, as well as the innumerable amount of little ones, it’s hard notto wish people took this commandment more serious than they actually do. 

What if when people said, “the check’s in the mail,” itactually was?  What if when people saidthey would “call you right back,” they actually did?  What if when a person RSVP’d, they actuallyshowed up?  What if someone actually toldyou when your butt looked big or when you had spinach in your teeth or that youforgot to zip up your fly when you came from the men’s room? (Ok, now this isgetting personal!)  What if, instead ofpassing the blame, we took the blame on ourselves?  What if, instead of making ourselves lookgood with our “little white lie,” we made ourselves look, well, human, with thetruth?  What if, when you were doingsomething crummy, someone gently but truthfully pointed it out to you? 

What if?