i’ve been in several conversations with several people and a recent topic of conversation has been centered around being nice and being honest and how there are differences between the two.

the question posed was “if a friend of yours who was truly awful at singing wanted to audition for american idol, would you tell them that they are really awful and not to go or would you tell them that they should go and try it out because they are good?”

some people said that they would want to be supportive of the friend and whatever they wanted to do, they would encourage such behavior. other people said that if they were truly awful, they would tell the truth instead of being nice.

it seems to be the dilemma that many people face these days. should i be nice and not hurt someone’s feelings so that i don’t feel bad for telling them the truth? or should i be honest and direct, potentially hurting someone else’s feelings and maybe feel bad about it myself?

it seems that a lot more people than i expected will choose to lie and say things that they are disingenuine about because they don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. instead of hurting the other person’s feelings, they decide that it is better to lie and not let the other person feel this pain that you can inflict on them.

personally, i find this to generally be bad practice. why? when you say things that you don’t mean, eventually, it’s going to come back and haunt you.

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