If you were 120 lbs and someone called you fat would you take offense? What if you were 300 lbs? It’s meaner when you call a fat person fat than when they’re not right? When that person isn’t fat, it must be a joke. Saying the wrong truths can get someone into a lot of trouble but saying the right lies can get you right back out of that trouble. Which brings us to today’s quote.

“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” -Groucho Marx

Today people always ask for an honest opinion. They want to know the truth about their Broadway performance, their cooking, their artwork, their writing, everything. There’s nothing wrong with that, a little honest criticism never hurt anyone, but a lot of honest criticism has. If you go on and on about one little flaw in a person you deserve to get popped in the mouth, if you say that one thing nicely and only once, you’re a caring and honest guy.

But what if someone has a lot of flaws? What if someone has too many flaws to count and doesn’t even realize he has them? What do you say then? Do you just let it go and hope he learns? Or do you start your list and tell them all to that person one by one? If you did that other person would be pissed right? That’s because what you are doing is the true essence of evil.

True evil branches from true honesty. Everybody has their flaws and their quarks. We know that. What most of us don’t know is that we all have at least one incredible insecurity. Something that, if mentioned, has the potential to drive us into either a blind rage or a blind depression. Few people realize what their greatest insecurity is, and it takes real balls to admit what it is. It’s a bad idea to say it, even around trusted friends. Especially, around trusted friends.

There’s nothing worse than being betrayed by a best friend and having your greatest insecurity used against you. If someone you’ve trusted for years decides out of nowhere to turn on you and use everything in his power to make you look like a fool and a coward, there’s no recovering from that. You either begin seeking revenge or go into a permanent depression that can never be lifted.

People are just that easy to mess with and that easy to mess up. It hasn’t always been this way though. Imagine the same situation if the word “sorry” actually meant something. Today that doesn’t cut it, that word has to follow some great moving speech, the kind of speech most people could never come up with. Coming ups with a good speech really isn’t that hard.

Say, for example, you’ve been best friends with Mark for seven to either years, he’s confided everything to you, including his one and only insecurity, his hair, he doesn’t like his hair. Let’s say it’s too curly. One day he comes to you looking troubled and tells you his girlfriend dumped him. And out of nowhere you decide to say, “She probably doesn’t want to be around a curly headed freak all the time,” you then walk away and go home. Later he might call you back and ask what’s wrong and you proceed to talk about how you’re tired of all his drama, tired of listening to his whiny, insignificant drama and hang up on him. If your friend continues to try he may walk up to you the next day and ask what’s going on, you then say, “Nothing, my life is perfect, my parents are great, my friends are awesome, I have everything I need, I just don’t want your mop of a head for a friend anymore.” You then walk away yet again.

At this point your friend is probably in shock and he’s probably pretty mad too. Later, say your with your new friends and as he walks by you all laugh at him saying things about how he’s stupid, worthless, dumb and last but not least his hair looks retarded. Then later that same day you decide to go that one extra step and beat him up with your new friends then take whatever he has on him including his wallet.

A true evil no? To have the lack of heart to be able to go so far in a random betrayal. There is nothing more disappointing or more frustrating than someone you trust and love just standing up and saying, “I’m out of this relationship and I’m going to make your life a living hell.” Completely out of nowhere, for no reason at all.

Just in case you ever do need to apologize for such a betrayal, how do you recover from such a thing? What could you possible say or do to rebuild a relationship in which you randomly betrayed someone, used their greatest insecurity against them and jumped them and took their money? The answer is a lot more simple than you think, but still no easy task.

It would all start with the return of his wallet and money because possession is more important than an apology. Then you would have to tell your new friends to back off your ex-friend. Because reputation is more important than an apology. Then a good speech, walk up to that ex-friend of yours and say something like, “Look, I had no reason to treat you the way I did [look down, stutter the word “I” for a bit, look back up and right into his eyes] I’m sorry.”

A perfectly executed apology. Your friend will remain mad at you but in good time you’ll be able to overhear him talking to someone and join in the conversation. Because eventually he’ll forget, no matter how bad it was, as long as it doesn’t continue.

Yet sometimes it is best to tell someone the ugly truth. The tricky part is when they won’t accept that truth. What do you do? Do you just keep repeating it? Or do you just let it go? In all honesty if can be a tough call sometimes, but if someone isn’t willing to listen now, they never will be. You gotta’ just ignore it and move on. Otherwise you’ll end up in a very painful place, full of headaches and anger.

There’s always a person out there with a very large list of flaws, a list so large it would take hours to go down. How can you tell a person about those flaws without making them mad? Isn’t listing them off one by one just as bad as repeating the same flaw over and over to people like this? How do you handle that? It’s impossible, even if you mentioned on flaw per month. Eventually the person is gonna’ get mad, eventually your gonna’ earn yourself a new enemy. The harder you try to change somebody the harder he’ll take it.

It’s good to tell the truth, tell someone they need to lose weight if they ask. Tell someone his Broadway performance was bad, his cooking tastes bad, his artwork looks horrible, he can’t write for the life of him, or anything else. Just be honest if someone asks. If a person doesn’t ask there may be a reason. Maybe he’s heard it all before and is just tired of it. Just because someone isn’t making the effort to become a better person doesn’t mean he’s stupid and lazy. It doesn’t even mean he’s satisfied with his life. It just means he’s not in a position to change.

People need to quit trying to criticize each other and just live their own lives. If you are asked to criticize, criticize. If not just keep your mouth shut and stay away from the situations or people you can’t stand. It all comes down to the old walking away strategy.

And that, as I always say, it today’s quote.