13585 Honesty
TOEFL Independent Writing
Essay Topic: Be Honest With Friends
Example Writing by Jeenn Lee Hsieh
ielts360toefl@hotmail.com 谢振礼
"Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters".
--Albert Einstein
Essay Prompt:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? "It is impossible to be completely honest with your friends". Use reasons and specific examples (based on your knowledge or experience) to support your answer.
Sample Essay by Jeenn Lee Hsieh:
It is generally believed that friends should be honest to each other, even when the truth harms the feeling. There are times when it takes strength and courage to be frank and admit the entire truth, which is easier said than done. Given that it seems impossible to be completely honest with our friends and that honesty does not always pay, actually dishonesty always costs.
To begin with, as members of the society we might ask ourselves, "why it is so hard to be completely honest with our friends?" This question, of course, is as puzzling as philosophical. According to Lin Yu-tang (a modern Chinese philosopher), "Society can only exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks". Translated, it is as if to mean that the relationship might be either the deceptive truth or the honest lie; or rather somewhere between the honest truth and the deceptive lie. No wonder, complete honesty, like true friendship, is hard to come by in real life. Now, we might ask ourselves another question, "are we indeed completely frank with our friends all the time without having to hide any part of the truth whatever?"
When under certain circumstances we choose not to tell the whole truth, we are likely to murder that part of friendship which is emotionally weak. It is due to the fact that the right friends are supposed to be 100 percent honest to each other, considering that mistrust would cost a high price and could even poison friendship. That is why best friends will always tell the truth, even if it is bad. In other words, we would rather friends be mad for a moment than be really, really hurt later. So, it is always the best policy to tell the whole truth (unless, jokingly, a person is an exceptionally good liar). After all, being honest may not get us many friends, but it will always get us the right ones.
On the whole, being completely honest with our friends is extremely difficult, but it may turn out to be rewarding in the long run. Unfortunately, the danger of telling 'white lies' is that this habit would gradually become 'color-blind'. Finally, think about it: honesty makes us vulnerable, to be sure, and yet be honest anyway! (Essay created by Jeenn Lee Hsieh, 谢振礼 pigai zuowen: ielts360toefl@hotmail.com)