If you aren't honest with yourself often you don't survive very long

Unless someone is taking care of you like they would a child.

Being honest with yourself and not being deluded often allows us to survive past 25 to 30. Once we are 30 often we have figured out things enough to last the rest of our lives if we have enough of our ducks in a row.

The problem with most religion is that it isn't honest. It is sort of like believing in Disney Cartoons and then having to face life the way it really is.

For example, I believed that there was one woman for every one man on earth. So I was searching for this one woman I should be with. The real problem here is I wasn't ready for this one woman and this one woman wasn't ready for me really until I was about 46 years old and had suffered enough to be able to take care of and to be taken care of by the right woman.

In other words I had to suffer a lot to get to the right level of honesty to make my life work. And here is the rub---- I was trying with everything in my being to be as honest with myself and all others that I could and still survive. But, it still took me to 46 to find the right person to spend the rest of my life with.

I met many wonderful women throughout my life. But, I wasn't ready for them really and neither were they for me. Suffering tends to make a person more honest. It seems we all live in a fantasy whenever we can. Often life is just too overwhelming to have a completely honest response to it until you have been tortured by real life enough.

So, honesty with yourself will keep you out of a mental institution. Honesty with others you can also do as long as it doesn't cost you your life along the way. So, being as honest as you can afford to be and still survive is mostly a good thing. But being honest with yourself will show you whether you are going to survive to 30 or not.

When I was young I was unbearably honest and this offended a great deal of people. I see this quality in my youngest daughter too and I sometimes worry about her, even though I know if she makes it to 30 like I did that this level of honesty (to self and others) will stand her in good stead integrity wise for the rest of her life.

She had an advantage I did not. She went to 3 really good private schools from the time she was 7 years of age so she didn't have to deal with all the life threatening crazy people I did growing up mostly in public school except for my senior year where I went to a church school in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

That last year I realized how amazing a private school can be where I was the biggest and the strongest there and there was no one to intimidate me or threaten me but teachers and other adults in church. And for me at least, they were easy for me to deal with. (AT least that's what I thought at the time).