What is a word or phrase that annoys you?
There comes a time in every conversation when someone takes a deep breath, lowers their voice slightly, looks you in the eye, and says the three words that should make every sensible person reach for cover.
“To be honest…”
At which point I always want to pause proceedings and ask, “I’m sorry, what were you being up until now?”
It is a troubling little phrase. Not catastrophic. Not immoral. Not the sort of phrase that should be dragged before a tribunal and made to explain itself under oath. But troubling all the same.
It suggests that we have suddenly entered a new room in the conversation. The previous room was apparently furnished with soft cushions, indirect lighting, and polite social etiquette. But now a door has opened. The fluorescent lights are on. Someone has moved the pot plant. We are about to see what has been hiding in plain sight.
Of course, most people do not mean it that way. They are not confessing to twenty minutes of fraud. They are signalling a shift. They are saying, in effect, “Brace yourself. The conversation is about to change.”
“To be honest, I didn’t love the idea.”
“To be honest, I think we need to talk.”
“To be honest, I’ve never really liked that casserole.”
This last one, obviously, is how families are destroyed.
The phrase is the conversational equivalent of music changing key halfway through a song. One moment everything is moving along nicely. We are in the land of agreeable nodding and harmless social phrases. Then someone pulls the lever marked sincerity and the whole thing lurches sideways.
Sometimes it slows the conversation down. The speaker is about to say something serious, vulnerable, or important. The air changes. Chairs creak. Someone stops stirring their tea.
Sometimes it speeds things up. The speaker has run out of patience and is now coming downhill without brakes, powered by frustration, caffeine, and several years of unspoken resentment.
That is the strange thing about the phrase. It can be blunt or tender. It can be a warning siren or a hand reaching across the table. It can mean, “I’m about to wound you,” or, “I’m about to trust you.”
That is why the phrase is not merely annoying. It is revealing. It tells us how much of our ordinary conversation is managed. We soften, delay, perform, protect, and translate ourselves. Then, every now and then, we announce that we are about to stop doing that.
To be honest, I think that is what bothers me.
Not the phrase itself, exactly. More the reminder that honesty sometimes needs an introduction.
The Afterword 
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