Honest!

The first half of my mandatory lunch hour I spend eating and reading TIME. The second half is spent blogging. Hence, the influence of what I’ve just read on what I write. Today’s subject was the final days of the Bush Administration and the rift that developed between Bush and Cheney as the vice-president pushed hard for I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby’s pardon. Because my simple mind requires simplistic analysis, I am reminded of that line of Sir Walter Scott’s often quoted to me by my mother, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” I find this germane to this ongoing discussion of trust and the critical role it plays in our personal, communal and societal lives. Once the lie, the deception, is out, there is virtually nothing that can bring it back. The damage is done. The trust is broken. As I’ve said before, it doesn’t even have to be intentional for the damage to be done, although intentional deceipt ultimately destroys any chance for restoring the trust lost. It all sounds pretty childish, and that’s when it would do us well to remember that Jesus reportedly pronounced that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to children. I will need to research the developmental psychology studies to see if I can determine just when our human mind figures out that it is possible to be deceitful and dishonest. The age old story of the Garden of Eden offers its own explanation for the shameful consequences of being less than honest. Whoever said it (Franklin, Twain, Shakespeare) hit the nail on the head, “Honesty is the best policy.”