When I was eleven years old I was on my way home from Japan with nineteen other preteens and four chaperones. We were on the Armstrong-Hokkaido Salmonoid Exchange that my town offered to twenty students every other year. We had just spent nine days in Hokkaido learning about salmon and watching the same fish that had swam up our rivers in the spring make their journey to the opposite end of the world; we had a layover in the Tokyo-Narita airport before catching our plane back to Vancouver. We ate lunch as a group and then, after doing our number countoff to make sure no one had gone M.I.A., we were allowed to go with our buddies to do some last minute souvenier shopping- but told explicitly which floors to stay on and where and when to meet back as a group before catching our plane. My buddy and I ended up in the bowels of the airport exploring some fascinating Japanese shops full of Hello Kitty. By the time we realized that we had wandered far and had no idea where we were or where we were supposed to be, we had no time left to find our group. We spent some time trying to sort it out, but my buddy-no where near as cool headed in a panic as myself- was starting to freak out that we were going to be stranded in Japan. I was starting to get a bit worried myself as I pictured the countoff beginning and then coming to a halt at eleven... as twelve and thirteen were running frantically around the airport. Would they just eventually carry on without us, keeping a small silence until fourteen chimed up and the count continued seamlessly. Would twelve and thirteen grow old in the airport? Unless the plane wouldn't leave without us. Would they really wait? Could they stall a whole entire airplane just for us? Not likely. The problem was that no one spoke english. And we were eleven. Finally we honed in on the one white-guy, who was apparently from Winnepeg which made us feel good, and he looked at our bits of ticket and papers that we had. He found us a Japanese-man-in-a-suit to take us where we needed to go. As we headed back with our Japanese-man-in-a-suit to meet up with the group I realized we were no longer in danger of becoming airport orphans and we were probably going to get into a lot of trouble. As I looked down at my tourquoise-and-purple-velcro-band-digital Timex secured to my wrist, I came up with an idea. We could actually be on time, if we set our watches back about fifteen minutes. The only thing is that we both had to do it, and then just stroll up to everyone else as if it's no big deal. I mean if both of our watches said the same thing how could they blame us? So I conveyed my plan to my buddy and we frantically, yet subtly, set our watches back a matching quarter of an hour.
We all know how the story ends. The chaperones were worried and we wouldn't have really gotten in much trouble because they were just concerned. However, we proceeded to lie blatantly to them and that got us in the bad books. The lies that seem so well thought out as a child, but to adults are more obvious than Freddy Mercury's love for men.
I meant to recount this story briefly to begin to make my points about the merit of living a truthful life, however I have a hard time telling brief stories.
Truthfulness is a beauty. I consider myself a very truthful person these days. As the story was meant to illustrate, I have not always valued truthfulness as strongly as I do now. Since the age of eleven it has been a slow but fruitful journey towards living a more and more truthful life. I can remember the two times that I have consciously lied (I say consciously because sometimes when I get carried away talking faster than I think I will lie unconsciously, but I will always immediately go back and nullify the false statement) in the past couple of years. Both times it was to make it look like I had not made a mistake, and both times I felt physically sick afterwards and had to go and fess up within twenty-four hours.
Getting caught for lying is always worse than dealing with the truth, and if you are not caught in this world I am sure that God in all His justice will deal with you in the spiritual worlds to come.
I had a lot of other things that I wanted to say about a more deep and philosophical truthfulness but my story was so long that I am going to pass on any more ramblings right now. In conclusion focusing on being truthful to others was not a difficulty for myself this week because that is something that I have focused on so much in the past that it is now in my nature. However, something that I did find some need to work on was being truthful with myself at all times. I don't think that that is an issue in my life at all, but not something that comes to me as naturally as being truthful with others does. In the Sacred Moments book there is a great Shakespeare quote, "This above all- to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."
Abd'u'l-Baha has also spoken strongly about truthfulness. He says, "Truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues. Without thruthfulness progress and success, in all the worlds of God, are impossible for any soul. When this holy attribute is established in man, all the divine qualities will also be acquired."
This weeks virtue is generosity. It is a good time to focuse on that in my life.
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