Walking Honestly Through A Shifting World - August 24

Is it possible to move through the world without ever telling a lie? In today’s 5 Minutes In Nature, Liz reflects on integrity, honesty, and staying true to yourself. She observes that in a world increasingly shaped by AI, it’s becoming harder to know what’s genuine and what’s not. Can we really live without speaking any mistruths? It seems the real answer lies in living with your own conscience—rooting yourself in your personal integrity and letting that be your guide.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott and I've walked up onto the moorland on a morning and it's a bit misty which I've got to say is quite welcome. Yesterday was an intensely hot day and it was quite a restless night with the heat but the mist came in overnight and cooled everything down and so as I walk today it's not cold but there's a freshness in the air. I can't see as far as usual today and I'm just going to be very cautious because the mists on Dartmoor can come down very thick very quickly so I'm going to stick to routes that I absolutely know like the back of my hand and today's reflection is all about telling the truth or telling lies and it's something that has been playing on my mind over the last few days. A friend's son has recently started selling some of her old clothes on one of these buying and selling sites and he's he's nearly 16 and I just happened to know that to do that you needed to be 18 on this particular site and so I very innocently said to him oh you're going to have to ask your mum to help you because you need to be 18 to do this and he said no I don't he said I'm already signed up um I'm already doing it and I was a little bit taken aback because I was like well but you're not you're not 18 and he said yeah but you know I'm it's really good for me I'm recycling stuff this is good experience so you know I feel like I'm doing the right thing and I sputtered out a few words about well but you think you need to be honest in what you do how you sign up to these platforms and he sort of just I don't know deflected and pooh-poohed and I went away feeling a little bit like an old woman like oh my goodness you know I'm am I the one that's being dafted because you know it seems to me that many people do this um so maybe I'm the one that's you know out of order here and I've been reflecting on it because I I do know that I find it very hard to deliberately tell untruths it's just it's just not something I like to do um even if it does seem to make life a bit easier and um I was reflecting back when I was a child a little kid I used to go to the sweet shop and get sweets with my pocket money I remember once going down to the local sweet shop and in those days you could get four chews little little chewy sweets for a penny and I went down there and I picked up a bag of sweets and I brought them back and I was really thrilled to realize that unbeknownst to me I'd picked up two two sweets they'd stuck together and I'd actually managed to get an extra sweet in my bag of sweets and I ran down to tell my dad and I said look I've got an extra sweet this is fantastic and he was really clear he said that's not your sweet that doesn't belong to you you haven't bought it you need to take it back to the shop so I remember this very long walk back to the shop well it was a short walk but it felt like a long walk to me to return this sweet and I told the shopkeeper what happened and and I just remember that interpreting it now that flicker on his face which was almost like a don't be daft just keep it but then he realized that there was there was obviously a lesson here that I was being taught so he accepted the sweet back and took it so yeah so there we go that's that's something ingrained into me about it's it's important to tell the truth and then and then yesterday I was speaking to a friend who's got a bit of a dilemma in her world and she's not sure whether to tell um her family something and I don't have a you know I don't know what the right answer is there isn't a right answer as I perceive it and the only thing I could suggest to her is you've got to the only person that lives with your conscience is you so you've got to be guided by your conscience and I think probably as I loop back to this is in a world where everything seems or so many things are harder to trust now because you don't know whether they're generated artificially in the news cycle in what images you see and videos you watch I've got to bring it back and my suggestion is we all do this bring it back to ourselves the only conscience you have to live with is your own so this is about walking through life with integrity with your conscience as your guide I'd like to hear your thoughts on that

Reviews

Thank you Liz 🙏🏼
I feel there is a lot of dishonesty now. It seems to be the way many people operate to achieve and it seems to be becoming an acceptable norm.
I blame covid lockdown, as many seem so reckless and entitled since that.
Your Dad was good Liz with making you take the sweet back to the shop.
As children my siblings and I use to nick lollies if we could from the corner shop. It felt good at the time and most kids try it.
Now I practice honesty and expect honesty in return.
It’s an interesting topic Liz as your friends son is showing entrepreneurial skills and there is no one online to say to him that he is not 18. He is making his own judgements and will reap the good and not so good outcomes of his choices. He is still too young to understand that. And he is fortunate to have you reminding him of his obligations to honesty even if he did deflect, your words have planted a seed in him.
🌿🙏🏼🌿

There is certainly a paucity of truth now…and since we can’t really change someone or control their behavior, your focus on how our own conscience feels is exactly right. Makes me think of a story I heard on NPR yesterday about “honesty boxes”. You probably know of these…