It’s really hard to be sincere with yourself. 

If I think about what sincerity actually is, it’s hard to put into words because it evokes more of a feeling. Different words describing it still can’t really capture its essence. Something gentle, curious, but also something piercing.

Sincerity is a virtue. Much like patience, grace, and humility, virtues ordained from on-high are still considered to be the markers of Human Excellence, and why shouldn’t they be?
Surely they are good, just and moral ways to be.

But when we practice patience, we are essentially turning against the immediate and uncomfortable experience of being impatient, so as to embrace the opportunity for patience that arises. (Really hard to do when you’re late and stuck in traffic and get every red traffic light).

And when we practice grace, we demonstrate our appropriately subdued and courteous manners so as to please others. 

In practicing humility, it is essentially an assurance to others that they need not feel small in the face of your achievements, and in fact it’s encumbered upon you to downplay them to a permissible extent.

To be clear, I think that the core of virtues are intrinsically good. I believe that they are of nature, because everyone can feel them when they are drawn upon within ourselves or when we are shown them by another. We know they are good, spiritually.
But virtues have solidified into canonic labels, distinguishing the moral elite from the vice-stricken heathens.

By ourselves, we are not righteous, or humble, or patient, or graceful.

These things only exist in the often very brief moments that they are offered in. It is a question arising from the universe, seeing if you will answer.

To elaborate the point. If I hold a perception of myself in my mind as having courage, does this mean I am courageous, as in ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am), or am I truly only courageous in the moments that demand my courage?
And to be truly courageous, I must truly be a coward.

A virtue, perhaps, can only be said to be practiced truthfully when it meets its opposite in us.

And so, back to sincerity. 

The reason that this particular virtue rolled around my head before I wrote this blog snapped into place when I looked up the definition. The specific wording is fairly diverse, but principally captures its honesty or genuineness – but without pretence. 

Pretence, arising from the Latin ‘to allege’ became, in English, ‘an attempt to make something appear true’. Hence, a ‘false pretence’.

Many of us mindlessly live our lives in pretence.

So to practice sincerity we must drop the pretence – the performance – which we may have come to mistake for our own beliefs. Beliefs that cause us to live in fear.
The fear of retribution, the fear of embarrassment, the fear of mockery, of shame, of despair.
Of all the things that we think we are protecting ourselves from by performing this god-sanctioned dance.
Not realising that the performance keeps you shackled in the cave – even when it is mistaken for being in good faith.

Sincerity is a true gift. One we can both give and receive – just by being ourselves. 

Which, for me, seems to be a difficult thing to do. But I realise it is not about what I have to do.
Maybe it’s what I don’t do.

In fact, maybe sincerity is the only truest virtue.
Maybe it’s the virtue all others emanate from.
Maybe it is the spine of our authentic being.

If we can’t be true to ourselves and towards ourselves – how can we have any chance of ever meeting those moments when we are impatient, or cowardly, or too proud – with any truth?
How do we come down from the stage and into the audience, and sit eye to eye?

Perhaps sincerity is the way of being. There is no choice to make, no struggle, no overcoming, no growth, as the other virtues demand in time, but are necessary in their own rights.

Even though it has always pained me to cause others to become upset, even if it was something that was hurting me just as much.
Even though what I say may not be received in the way I intend it to.
Even though it feels like cutting my chest open and baring my heart to millions of strange eyes (hello Internet).

I choose to drop the pretence. And meet every moment exactly as it is. 

It’s hard. I never realised I was actually carrying anything, until I looked closely.

And it’s all of our defaults to carry. It’s not our fault.

But we can learn to drop what we carry.
And honestly, it is so much easier than picking up.

But it takes awareness and it takes repeatedly catching yourself.
In a way, the fear is the signal.
‘Ah. I’m holding that again’.

Let’s learn to lighten the load a bit more together.

Sincerely yours,
Charlie