Poetry

Honesty  by Praveen Kumar Honesty is like lovely flowers, Blossoming in their own trees, Fair and simple without strains; Honesty is pure inner voice, Without deflections by the self; True to conscience, honesty is; But, not truth, by itself; Soft and gentle like full moon light, Honesty is reflected conscience, Unlike sunlight of the direct truth; Honesty is always circumspect, Revolving around the conscience, Built in and sprout from integrity. Quiet and silent, Honesty prefers to bow and crawl; It is firm, yet flexible in tone, Amidst noise, comforting tune; Honesty never jumps and shouts, Grounds always to deeper depths To confirm, reconfirm fairness in it; Truth is verbal and loyal to law While honesty, loyal to justice itself, Honesty is god, the final truth. Honesty is multi-rooted truth, Its tentacles spread to depths and breadths, To widths and heights, in dimensions all, And blossoms truth in total shape; Honesty is that gentle light That spreads out from everlasting lamp Of consciousness deep inside soul, In tandem with universal truth; Honesty is pure satisfaction, Honesty is the enrichment within, Honesty hoists confidence, Honesty is strength in its truer sense That helps to walk, head held high. No tinge of doubts ever suffers honesty, No reasons ever refract honesty, For, honesty springs direct from soul, Its roots embedded in Being itself; Honesty is fairness seen within, Without manoeuvres souring it; Honesty sprouts from integrity's floor And adds to peace and comforts of world.

...This poem is a perfect example of what honesty means, and describes the different traits that an honest person has. Throughout the poem, honesty is explained without the presence of dishonesty anywhere, which shows that the poem is an excerpt of pure honesty. I learned from reading this poem that honesty is the ability to tell the truth no matter what the circumstance. Also, being honest not only makes you feel better as a person, but also "hoists confidence" (Kumar, Honesty, 34) in yourself and "helps to walk, head held high" (Kumar, Honesty, 36)  which creates a sense of pride. Honesty is a very valuable trait, and is also very simple to earn, because everybody has the ability to be honest with one another. Honesty also "springs directly from the soul" (Kumar, Honesty, 39) and is "pure inner voice"(Kumar, Honesty, 4) because to be honest, you simply have to tell the truth and speak what you are feeling inside, where as with lying you will have to make up false claims that didn't actually occur. Therefore with honesty you only have to remember one thing, which is the truth, and with dishonesty you have to make up multiple lies to cover up from the original lie. My flash fiction relates to this poem when it says that honesty is "fair and simple without strains" (Kumar, Honesty, 3), because throughout the story Julius chose to be honest while competing against Jedi and played fairly. This was a simple way to win the challenges because all he had to do was try his hardest and not cheat, and in the end he was rewarded for his actions even though he lost both races. Another important effect that honesty can have on us is that it "adds to peace and comforts the world" (Kumar, Honesty, 44), which is true because without honesty our world would be full of lies and out of control...