Be What Thou Seemest

Sincerity has two essential sides: the sincerity we expect from others, and the sincerity within ourselves. Sincerity is the assurance that things are as they seem to be.

A misleading label is a kind of insincerity. An inferior product is a kind of insincerity. A trick clause in a contract is a kind of insincerity. Either we are what we pretend, either we mean what we say, either we do what we agree, either we keep a contract, keep commandments, give honest value, work earnestly⎯either we are what we appear to be, intimately and sincerely inside ourselves, or we are not.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh said, “The most exhausting thing in life . . . is being insincere.” Pretense is exhausting⎯the failure to be what we seem.

“Sincerity,” said John Tillotson, “is to . . . do as we pretend to profess, to perform what we promise, and really to be what we would seem and appear to be . . . [It] is like traveling on a plain, beaten road, which commonly brings a man sooner to his journey’s end than by-ways, in which men often lose themselves.”

“The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world,” said Socrates, “is to be in reality what we would appear to be . . .” Said Horatius Bonar: “Be what thou seemest! Live thy creed!” From Confucius: “Sincerity and truth are the basis of every virtue.” “Sincerity is impossible,” said James Russell Lowell, “unless it pervades the whole being, and the pretense of it saps the very foundation of character.”

P.J. Bailey summarized it in this sentence: “It matters not what men assume to be; or good, or bad, they are but what they are.”

In short, to be sincere, men should live what they believe, should do what they agree, should be what they seem. We are no better than we are, no better than the intent of the heart, than the thoughts we think, than the deeds we do, than the commandments we keep, than the lives we live. Such is the essence of sincerity.