Saturdays: Piero Ferrucci on Honesty

But honesty does not concern only the difficult, unpleasant aspects in life. Even more it concerns the creative and beautiful ones. Because often, strange as it might seem, we hide those very aspects: our tenderness, goodwill, original thoughts, our capacity for being moved. We do this partly out of a sense of reserve: We don’t want to overwhelm others with our gushing emotions. But mostly we do it to protect ourselves. We don’t want others to see us like that. We would feel weak, exposed, perhaps ridiculous. Better to appear a bit cynical, even hard, or, at the very least, not so dangerously open. In that way, however, we separate from the most spiritual and beautiful part of ourselves—and prevent others from seeing it.

From the English translation of Piero Ferrucci’s The Power of Kindness.