Loyalty And Personal Truth

Anne DiDomenico

The struggle to understand loyalty – an ideal most people value in the make-up of character – and its relation to personal truth has been a most troubling challenge toward owning my life more fully. I’ve spent a number of years mulling over what loyalty really means and what it looks like in action, as life experiences have caused me to pause and consider inherent underlying assumptions and expectations.How people should respond to life, relationships and country is so woven into our cultural belief system that we don’t pause to inquire about its validity.How true is the accepted concept of loyalty for me in any given moment?How do I define loyalty?Should it always be an automatic response like a knee-jerk reaction?Does this ideal exist beyond questioning?

In an effort to move toward understanding, I found formal definitions a way to “see” what I was dealing with in terms of accepted beliefs.

Loyalty: “tie binding a person to something to which he is loyal.”

Loyal: “unswerving in allegiance; faithful in allegiance to one’s lawful sovereign or government; faithful to a private person to whom fidelity is due; faithful to a cause, idea, or custom.”Loyal implies a “firm resistance to any temptation to desert or betray.”�

The defining words used in these definitions, i.e., unswerving, allegiance to, fidelity due, and faithful, convey the heavy weight of obligated burden to me.My assumptions: loyalty means don’t let us down; do the right thing.My questions:Do I always know what the “right” thing is?Is there more than one “right”?Who gets to define the “right” I base my actions on?What becomes clear to me in this is that loyalty holds many unspoken expectations and underlying assumptions yet to be addressed.

The word, truth, also needed to be defined.The following definitions became an important springboard for questioning the idea of “facts,” “reality” and conformity in relation to personal truth.

Truth: “the quality or state of being true; specifically, loyalty, trustworthiness, sincerity, genuineness, honesty; the quality of being in accordance with experience, facts, or reality… Truth suggests conformity with the facts or with reality either as an idealized abstraction or in actual application to statements, ideas, etc…”

Reading this brought up lots of questions for me.To whom am I really being true?To whom am I being trustworthy, sincere, genuine, and honest?Do I have this kind of relationship with myself?Whose “facts” are we talking about?Do irrefutable “facts” exist totally separate from my experiences?For me, the only irrefutable “fact” is my experience in the moment where I gain personal knowledge through self-awareness.All else is up for questioning – that incredibly important component of critical thinking that leads me to new thought.

And while I’m questioning the belief around “facts,” how about questioning the belief around “reality”?On whose “reality” am I basing my decisions for loyalty?Is there a true reality apart from my own?Is this possible?Is there an agreed upon collective reality that stands apart from my own?OK, here’s a bottom line question: is there ANY reality separate from my own?Inquiry – it’s an amazingly confusing process!

From these questions, I identified several possible underlying assumptions.

1.One might assume loyalty to something or someone is automatically in perfect alignment with personal truth.In other words, the act of being loyal assumes that my actions agree with my thoughts and emotions.The assumption is that there is no conflict going on inside me while I act out loyalty.

2.One might also assume that loyalty and personal truth are one and the same thing.Again, this assumes agreement exists between actions, thoughts and emotions.

3.Another assumption could be loyalty has nothing to do with personal truth.Just as we appear to exist apart from others, loyalty appears to exist on its own merits as an ideal.The assumption here is that an ideal exists separate from our personal thoughts, emotions and actions.

What is noticeably missing from the definitions is this:there is n

o mention of honesty to self or staying true to one’s self while acting out loyalty to someone or something else.

It’s as if loyalty and personal truth are viewed as two separate decisions (if, indeed, there is any decision making ability here at all) for how to be. One may conclude that being loyal to something or someone else can either be the same as loyalty to one’s self… or not.No consideration is given to the potential for individual internal conflict to occur. Assumption:we all “see,” think and understand the same way despite a mountain of opposing data.

A lifetime of personal situations produced these confrontational thoughts.In my family of origin, there existed a strong assumption that when disagreements arose among family members, individuals took sides and stood shoulder to shoulder against the opposing member or members.The assumption was even stronger when the disagreement was with someone outside the family circle.As a child and young adult, I experienced first hand what it meant to be pressured with the expectation of loyalty to one parent in conflict with another and in situations where a parent was in conflict with relatives.These experiences were always filled with pain and anxiety.I felt torn between feeling loyal to one beloved parent while being required to separate myself from another beloved parent for the sake of someone proving “rightness” in the moment.

Once into full adulthood, I continued to experience assumptions around loyalty with my own growing family – spouse to spouse, parent to child.During this period, I had also embarked on my journey to conscious self-awareness.In light of finding out who I was and coming to truth within myself, I found loyalty a nagging dilemma.With persistence and in-depth readings, writings and conversations, I eventually drew the conclusion that there could be no true loyalty to anyone but myself!What a thought!This meant that unless my thoughts (backed by beliefs) about a current situation were aligned with my emotions and actions, to be loyal to another meant betrayal to me!

This very disorienting thought was, at first, hard to believe. It was so counter to what I had been taught.What I was coming to understand was that true loyalty could not stand apart from personal truth. It was clear that I was asking myself to make a decision – the decision to always be honest with myself first and foremost.It was also clear that this was no small or easy decision to make.It would clearly change my life!

Over time, I applied my newly made decision to situations as a test for myself.I learned that it was, indeed, true that when I moved toward loyalty to another I sometimes moved away from myself and acted in conflict with my personal truth.This remained my quandary for a long time.The growing awareness of internal conflict was a red flag I could not deny.If I wanted to be self-aware and live my truth, I had to look at what was going on in me.With this new understanding of loyalty, how could I be in relationship with others?What would this look like?Would they be disappointed in me?Would they know I still loved them and supported them despite this particular difference?Would I be ultimately disappointed in myself in acting out this new understanding of how to be? Would I suffer rejection, misinterpretation, labeling, or worse, be dismissed as an anomaly in human development?

Upon reflection, I found that my expectations of me were that I be attentive and loving to those around me, that I be fully present for them in time of need, that I provide my whole-hearted support to them while staying true to myself.So, what did this really look like?To me, it looked like someone who found the courage to respect her truth and not be swayed.When thought, emotion and action are aligned, integrity is the result.Devoid of judgment, this feels strong, honest and powerful.To my family, it looked like betrayal when it did not coincide with their expectations.They were confused and confounded by my idea of support.They had great difficulty reconciling what they understood as my undeniable love for them with the apparent fact that I could not act in a manner that fulfilled their expectations.Running counter to expected norms is a tough choice.The upside:it can be life-giving!

There is no end to this story.My family moved into the process of questioning not only me but their own ideas around loyalty.Together, we experienced painful encounters as I stayed committed to respectful honesty with myself and them.My learning put my family to the test of rethinking their own assumptions and beliefs around loyalty and expectations.To their credit, they have entered the world of inquiry in greater measure.For me, this has proven to be without question a most valuable challenge to owning my life more fully.

WHEN ONE IS TRUE TO ONE’S SELF, THERE IS NO BETRAYAL.