Honesty

How important is honesty to you? Is it more important than kindness? Share a story of a time you or someone you know was not honest and it caused problems or was 'too honest' and it caused problems.

Honesty is very important to me. I don't value either kindness or honesty above the other. I think that a situation could call for both, or one or the other, and whichever is more appropriate and condusive to happiness is what is needed.
Once upon a time, there was this young lady. We will call her, Harrieta (she is a real young lady, and this was a real situation, we're just not going to call her her real name). She was a young woman, maybe eight or nine. She often was untruthful, but as she was young, it didn't matter much. However, one day, she wanted to come with our family on a little outing. We asked her, "Did you ask your mother?" She said, "Yes, I asked her. She said yes." We took her along. Much later that day, after we have returned, Harrieta's mother comes over. "Do you know where Harrieta is?" she asks. "Why yes," we say, "She's with us. We just got home." She says, "I've been looking and looking. I've been so worried. I didn't know what to do. She was gone, she didn't ask me if she could go anywhere, she didn't say she was going anywhere, she left and I haven't heard anything from her for hours!" We then explained that Harrieta had told us that she had given Harrieta permission to go with us. This had caused her mother hours of worry and frustration, and Harrieta weeks of being grounded.