How honesty or dishonesty takes shape at different levels

“Honesty is the best policy.”

This is a quote that even if you are a novice in the English language, you will be aware of. This five-word sentence means a lot more than what it says. It does not just mean that being honest is the best, but it carries various meanings within it, which when someone deeply thinks about this quote, gets to know.

Childhood is the condition when someone is like a sapling. A sapling, or a small plant, is the equivalent of a child. You might see that the sapling grows in the direction from which it receives the sunlight, if the sunlight falls over it from right on top, it grows straight. If the sunlight falls over it from a different angle, the sapling grows into the tree from that angle.

Now you might ask that how is this sapling analogy related to the childhood of a person? Well, a child learns from its surroundings, what his/her elders and from the other people around him/her. Hence, the influence is like the sunlight, which makes the child have a mindset which is according to the influence, and make him think how he has learnt to do so.

This is when the child learns how to be honest, how to be disciplined, how to be consistent, how to be determined, how to learn anything that is important and crucial to learn. Now, if the influence around him teaches him to be honest, he will learn to be honest, and if the influence around him teaches him to be dishonest, then he will learn to be dishonest, and act dishonestly.

Dishonesty at the child level does not have huge impacts, but as an adult, if someone is dishonest, then it can have huge impacts, on the whole society. Corruption, theft, robbery, smuggling, and social evils like these prove that honesty wasn’t something that was taught properly to humanity. These weapons like corruption, theft, robbery, smuggling, create huge scars on our society and become burdens and problems for the society.

Honesty not only depends upon the people around someone, but it also depends on oneself. It depends on what someone thinks that what he or she should do, and how he should do it. Like earning money as an example; there are two ways to earn money, both legal and illegal means. It’s up to the person who chooses among the two available methods, and it’s up to the person to choose to be honest or dishonest.

Honesty not just means good to others, but when you are honest, you are stress-free or tension-free. You don’t have anxiety of being exposed with someone. It just makes our life more comfortable and more stress-free. So, be honest, and teach others to be honest.