Is Honesty the best policy?

By Rohit Nirmal

(Written June 2003 by this 13 year old young man.)

Honesty is the best policy. If you do not lie to the other person, he or she will like and trust you. By being dishonest, you are cheating the other person and people won’t trust you. This is how honesty is appreciated. We all must respect and learn how important it is. A good way is to show an example.

Let’s say that a person bought groceries worth $20, but pays the cashier $40. Normally, the cashier would give $20 as change to the person, but suppose that she accidentally gives an extra $10. If the person were honest, he would give the cashier that $10, thus gaining respect and trust. However, if he was dishonest, he would greedily take the extra $10 and leave. If this happened, what would the cashier do? The manager of the store might notice and force the cashier to pay $10 from her own pocket. By being honest, this wouldn’t have happened at all.

If you were that person, what would you do? If I were that person, I would be honest and give back the money. I would want to help out and gain respect. I will bring up a different example.

Your parents want you to go to sleep at 9:30 p.m. promptly. But you want to leave your house and stay out and go to the movies and sleep very late. So, you leave and go to the movies, thinking that your parents would not find out.

When you buy your ticket and sit in the theatre, you notice the last person coming in with a big bag of popcorn. The person then sits behind you and accidentally drops his bag on you. You look behind and see your dad. You are both surprised to see each other and later on, back at your house, you are grounded and it will take a long time to earn back your parent’s trust. If you were honest, you would stay home and sleep at the time you were supposed to, and you wouldn’t be grounded.

See what happened? I would have obeyed my parent’s orders. My parent’s would be greatly disappointed if I didn’t.

Now you know the great importance of honesty. Without it, civilization would be in shambles. I hope you will continue to learn about it, and become honest.

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