mine is that people in general are bad and terrible and my ideal life would be as a hermit with very little interaction with anyone except my animals and plants and no impact from people or governments and never reading the news.
when i was young, i was optimistic about the future of the human race but reality has bitch-smacked my inner child and taught me the truth and it keeps getting confirmed the older and older I get.
so what lessons have you learned as you’ve gotten older?
Honesty is almost always the right choice. If you tell the truth directly and with kindness, you’ll find out who is worth caring about and who isn’t real quick. A surprisingly large percentage of people are willing to put up with the occasional badly worded or blunt remark if it means less ambiguity and deception. There are two tricks to doing this right:
Be self aware enough to know when you’re playing the “I’m not an asshole, I just tell it like it is” game, and don’t do that. You can always say things in the nicest possible way, and being a dick doesn’t make you honest, it just makes you a dick.
There is a line that you need to be aware of, where being honest can get people hurt or killed. When you reach that line, you need to be ready to seamlessly transition from being honest and direct and kind to looking honest and direct and kind while lying your ass off. So spend some time refining your ability as a liar but don’t use those skills until you need to.