One True Sentence

So. I'm ill (I think it's a sinus infection) and skeptical. So what to do when coming home from work? Eat nachos and read Hemingway, of course.

I strongly object to Hemingway on personal grounds. The man was a raging alcoholic and a misogynist, so naturally I dislike him. I am, however, objective enough to recognize that whatever his fatal character flaws, he managed to make some sort of contribution to the world of literature so, when I am ill and skeptical I take down his books and read them for a bit.

I was reading in A Movable Feast where he speaks about his own writing. He was saying that when he felt stuck, when he didn't know what else to write that he would start with one true sentence. Just one. And he would be able to write from there. So, feeling a bit confounded by The Blog myself, I thought that I should start with one true sentence. Here it is:


Surely one of our great sorrows is that we should speak so much insincerity and dishonesty in the name of kindness, in sparing others feelings, so that we can barely recognize truth in ourselves.


I've been percolating on this topic of late. And my own intense frustration with wanting to say things. True things. Honest things. But being constrained by the fear of hurting people. And then one day I should regret it if I knew that something that I had said, regardless of how true it was at the time, had hurt someone I cared about. And yet. I can't help but feel that, at these times I am willing living a lie. I allow this person. These people. To continue to believe what they want to believe. To continue to see the world (or at the very least me) in a way that is not true or real. And it annoys me. A lot.

So why do we do it? Why continue to let people believe things that simply are not true? How can this be a kindness? How is this deception somehow more merciful than the truth would be?

I have no answers. After all, I continue every day to say things that I don't quite believe, or just as bad though slightly different, I don't say things that I do believe in order to spare another human beings feelings. I don't like it. But I continue to do it because it seems the greater cruelty to selfishly smash those feelings rather than deceptively muffle them.

I feel a bit like Medea. I know the evil that I continue to perpetrate and yet I am powerless to stop myself. But I'm tired. Tired of the forced deception. Just once I would like to have one whole day to be honest. To tell people how I really feel, what I really think; to say whatever happens to be on my mind regardless of how mean or petulant. Just one day.


But who's to say? It may be that that one day is enough to irreparably ruin every relationship I currently have. And then who is the cruelty directed towards? Them or me, and yes it sounds a bit trite, but I know that my life would be empty without them in it.