The Irritating Moment of Self Honesty

There is nothing more irritating than a sudden piercing moment of self honesty.

Oh, it is certainly a worthwhile thing. Self honesty leads to self awareness and self awareness leads to action.  And that, of course, is a splendid idea.

But it always comes at a price.  And self honesty charges a very high admission fee indeed.

Because to be self honest is to have the willingness to constant assess one's totality - actions, thoughts, emotions, intents - and be willing to call out and accept when one is wrong or misses the mark.  Following on this, one has to have to presence of mind not just to become aware of these facts but to be willing to take action on them - it is not merely enough to know; we need to do.

But these moments of self honesty seldom come at convenient times for us.  In a happy and perfect world they would come when we are relaxed and calm, fluttering into our consciousness like happy little butterflies that softly land on our hands.  Alas, this is seldom the case: instead they more often than not come crashing into our heads like anvils falling from airplanes, catching us unaware as we are in the midst of some crisis or conflict.

I say "irritating" because on one hand that is exactly what I mean:  the moment that such insights come find me seldom grateful for them as I am usually dealing with something else that needs resolution and suddenly realizing where I miss the mark or a personal weakness I had previously not analyzed is hardly what I need at that moment.  And so I am having to train myself to take those moments of self awareness and honesty and embrace them even in the midst of my conflict and chaos, because it is precisely in those moments that I am most in need of the truths that they offer.

Sudden moments of self honesty can be irritating.  The trick is to make sure that the irritation does not keep us from the truth of them.