Honest people

Honest people. Do they exist?

    I spent the afternoon recently with my mother and grandmother─who I refer to normally as “my two mothers”──and we discussed whether anyone is honest. I brought up the point that so much of what we say is either based on perception or, on standard stock─phrase─statements which essentially comply with what the listeners expects to hear. If a nice elderly woman in the waiting room of the doctor’s office tells me what a beautiful day it is, and then asks for my opinion, I probably won’t tell her that it’s so humid outside that I’m having to swallow my air in gulps rather than breaths. So I lie. I don’t want to poison her day. I tell her what she wants to hear.

    So this makes me a liar, doesn’t it? It seems that so long as I am speaking, I’m probably lying, without even knowing it. The doctor asks me where I was born, and wherever I say could potentially be a lie. I run into situations like this all the time.

    One of my favorite authors, Paulo Coehlo, writes that a Warrior of the Light does not lie. Maybe I’m being too literal, but I fail to see how this is possible. So I’m hopeful for some advise from my readers, or from anyone. What are the defining factors of an honest person?