People are familiar with the saying from our court system of being sworn in to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Regrettably, while there are many people that will dutifully affirm that they will indeed tell the whole truth; the fact of the matter is, far fewer ever do so, in a court of law, or in life, in general. The thing about the whole truth, is that in the telling of such, it does not provide those so speaking to that whole truth, any wiggle room, whatsoever; and if there is one thing that we know about human nature, is that most people prefer to have that wiggle room, to maneuver, to distort, to leave out, to manipulate, and to deceive -- in particular in those types of situations in which the telling of the whole truth would either expose them in a way and manner that they really don’t want to see occur, or perhaps, in the protecting of another person’s sensitive feelings or concerns.
The thing about not telling the whole truth, is that for many a person, they have been not telling the whole truth for so long, and for so often, that it has become for them, second nature. They thus find themselves in the position, time and time again, in which they cannot really express the whole truth, because the edifice of the life that they have thus built upon, is actually based to a significant extent upon not ever divulging the whole truth to anyone of significance. After all, it could be reasoned, that a good friend of ours, probably doesn’t want to or couldn’t handle the whole truth about what we really think about them, especially when a negative feeling we have about them has been hidden from them, for such a lengthy period of time. In other words, if some of us, were to suddenly become true confessors, and thus to unburden everything that we really believed, in comprehensive divulgence, as in a complete “data dump,” those so hearing such, that also had an emotional involvement in that confession, would probably not only be hurt from such, but could, in fact, be devastated.
That said, it is always easy to justify any action, as being done in order to protect our friends, our family, and others, in general – when, in truth, the real reason is seldom that consideration at all, but rather has an awful lot to do with protecting our own self-image, and therefore how we are perceived by people or organizations that we really care about. The reason why so many are so reluctant to tell the whole truth, is because they believe that by doing so, they will be exposed for who they really are, and hence lose the respect of their peers, and fall down, perhaps heavily, in the pecking order of life. Those then, that fail to tell the whole truth, are the very same people, that do not desire to “face the music,” at the present time, nor do they desire to face that music, at a later time, either, They don’t tell the whole truth, because they want to have their cake and eat it too, and do not ever want to have pie thrown upon their face.