"Hey Honesty"

STORY

I was tempted to skip my blog this week because of the current state of our world and the country I call home. It’s hard for me to comprehend everything that’s going on right now, and I feel ill-equipped to speak out. It’s like I’m watching our society get swallowed whole by fear on all sides. When we let fear take us over, our bodies go into fight-or-flight mode, which is the same programming as kill-or-be-killed. It’s an ugly state that leads to rash decisions made with a sole goal—survival.

So instead of letting fear keep me from posting, I’m releasing a song I wrote a year and a half ago about a tricky thing we call “honesty.”

Fight-or-flight has no regard for the truth. It will say anything to survive. That goes for external threats just as much as it does for internal ones. My own inner demons lie to me all the time when they feel threatened by my constant personal growth pursuits. But truth and honesty are not synonymous.

Truth is something rooted in fact, and it can be wielded as a weapon just as much as it can be used as a shield. Honesty, however, is more than just mere truth. It’s truth + compassion. Truth is cold. Honesty is baked in love.

Honesty is not just telling the truth about your thoughts and feelings, it’s doing so with enough vulnerability to let the love buried deep within every one of our hearts shine through.

While our world absolutely needs more truth, what it really needs is more honesty. As we all try and figure out what we can do individually to improve racial relations in America, I’m going to focus on putting fear aside and being honest. Truth can be ugly sometimes, which is why we need to embrace it with love and compassion to transform it into honesty.

Then maybe, if we approach each other with honesty, we’ll find we have more in common than we thought.

LYRICS

by: Marshall Seese, Jr.

Hey honesty
Your mystery confounds and confuses me
Hey honesty
It doesn’t seem to blame you for anything
Or anyone

You’re the sharpest knife
You can take a life
You reflect our light
So we fight and we lie
Honestly, it doesn’t seem right

Hey honesty
Everyone’s pretending they’re in love with you
But honestly
We’re too damn scared to commit to you
To say “I do”

You’re the sharpest knife
You can take a life
You reflect our light
So we fight and we lie
Honestly, this doesn’t seem right

No one knows me like you do
Why do you have to be so cruel
Do you take me for a fool?

What am I supposed to do?
What’ll I have to face up to?
What if what you say is true?

Hey honesty
All I really want is to love myself
Hey honesty
If you take me as I am I will take me too
So tell the truth

You’re the sharpest knife
You saved my life
You reflect our light
Til we cry, yeah we cry
Hey honesty
Honestly I think you’re right