What if Everyone Told the Truth?

This is a giant concept for some writer or philosopher out there to explore.

I've personally started a few story ideas and a couple of novels with this question as the main theme. But, I've abandoned those ideas and projects, mostly because I have had to literally comb through thin my expectations for my writing life, so I won't feel so overwhelmed, so I can focus on what works best for me. So many ideas and starts and so little time; I have enough great writing ideas and cool projects started to literally fill all the days of my life if I did nothing else but work on them. (Just like the reason for this blog.)

I said "mostly because". There is a small "partly because" to add here. I've abandoned this particular project nugget, because I can never live in it. I mean, I can't create the world, the characters, the situations, or the dialogue with fully honest truth-telling. It's a block I know I won't get over, because I know my heart and mind so well. It's my own shadow, and I can't shine a light on always telling the truth without feeling I'm cheating, if I as the messenger don't do the same. But, as we know, sometimes the truth hurts.

All of us have stuff stored that is only ours, for a reason. Choices we made, thoughts we hated having, embarrassment or shame, missed chances, crimes and misdemeanors, wrong impressions that are easier for others to have of us than for us to dispel so we maintain them because we can. And some of us, like me, perceive our own unlit aspects as too dark, enormously weighty, and not at ALL a good fit for the much larger, happier, more successful, conventional, loving, blessed aspects that really do compose the vast majority of our selves and our lives.

Ooh. Sorry, that was only going to be a "partly" bit. But, I suppose, if someone wants to write this idea, it's best they are warned about the territory they may also find themselves exploring.

However, I do sincerely believe this simple hook What if Everyone Told the Truth? is a gripping hypothesis and is connected to a potent line of consideration.


My first thought is that relationship, as a human endeavor, would be altered beyond recognition. It seems equally possible for any relationship to explode into oblivion or evolve into a warm nirvana when you apply the paradigm of everyone telling the truth. The quality of our relationships depends on the quality of our communications, so right there you have all kinds of cool what-if scenarios. Think about small children who haven't yet learned to edit their thoughts.

My middle daughter offers the most profound example in our family, and it's when I first got the idea for a storyline based on this concept. She wore her reactions on her sleeve and verbalized them when she had the words. There were the facts (Mommy, that man is faaaat. As we shared the elevator with him for 9 floors) and the opinions, too. (As the lady checked us out at the store: That lady has spiders on her eyes. No honey, that's just her make-up on her long eyelashes. It's scary. She buries her head in my shoulder. Oh, don't be scared. It's ugly like a doll! Okay, first hint at the aversion to the dolls who have those long eyelashes and just sit there looking at you. And yes, I taught the children manners and social graces and how not to say something if it isn't nice and.... ding ding ding! Big Idea.)

More specifically, imagine how your whole world would change if everyone suddenly started telling you the truth. Your parents. Your teachers. Your community leaders. The whole standard for...for... EVERYTHING would change. Would we recognize ourselves? Would we de-evolve? Would we become holy and pure and float around with no pain, as pain is caused by judgement, and there would be no good or bad if everything was Truth?

One story I started began with a long, somewhat shocking but not criminal or disgusting, laundry list of truths about a woman. She posed the question, what if you found out your dear friend or your church group leader.... how would you feel? Would you rather not know? Too late, because all those things are true about me. It was a suicide note. The rest of the story was to be told by the spirit of her unborn son, whom she had aborted years earlier, more for convenience and selfishness than any real hardship or fear.

Another story I started was being told by a man, who was 15 years older than his beloved (kind of his obsession, but he loved her wholly and she was special). He realized he loved her when he (writing professor) had her as community college student, but he also realized he had loved her since he met her, when she was four. She was angelic and a genius and a writing savant in his eyes. Saintlike, almost. He unearths her journals after she has gone missing, and slowly explores them, and discovers she was much much more than he knew. She, probably, was crazy, and not all good. Pained, even. Or brainwashed and controlled? He couldn't be sure but the story unfolds through his telling and reading of her journals. He thought she always told the truth but what happened when he read her personal truths. And were they truths at all?

Have at any of it. Hope it makes some sense. I feel the right writer could really shake up our emotions with this topic. I've always thought to do it as fiction, by the way, mostly because that's all I'm qualified to write. And partly because same as above.