A Question of Sincerity

(A short draft from a while back. Unedited before posted.)

I’ve been wondering what it is to be sincere, not just on a level of ‘that’s what I think,’ or ‘I feel this way,’ but totally, completely sincere, with the whole of one’s being. To just go off of the Google definition, “free from pretense or deceit; proceeding from genuine feelings,” we see that it is also a question of deceit and how to be genuine. Normally, this may be a question how one acts towards another, but in order to be sincere with another, mustn’t one be completely understanding about oneself, to wholly know the interior workings guiding an action?

So, what does it mean to understand our interior workings? Can I be sincere with myself if I have this feeling about another, an emotional attraction say, and yet think to myself, “I shouldn’t feel this way.” In this, I am neither completely for or against a given possibility. To be torn this way or that within. I want to do well in school, pass an exam, or give a good presentation in the workplace, and yet I want to go out, have a drink, forget about what work calls for. Then, to add to emotional feelings and intellectual thoughts, how does this body actually act? What does it go with? Perhaps it doesn’t go with either my feelings or thoughts. Maybe I end up staying home and being lazy, not going out or doing work. I become completely torn every which way.

It would seem that to be sincere, there must be a spontaneity in living, a connecting current moving through all parts of myself and guiding external action. If there is time, one eventually comes up with an opposing force, a thought to counter whatever it is I had been thinking about doing. Time in this is memory, expectation, all connection to what I think has already happened, and what I think might happen. There comes into being comparison, and this is contradiction, internal violence. How can one be sincere with oneself if there is even a hint of inner violence?