Have you noticed something strange? The moment someone starts a sentence with “to be honest” or “if I’m being completely frank,” you instinctively tense up a little. Your inner voice goes: Oh great. Now it’s lying time.

Linguists clocked this ages ago: the more we underline sincerity with words, the more suspicious it sounds. Basically, “sincerely yours” feels more questionable than just “yours”.  Why is that?

So the next obvious question is: what is sincerity, anyway? I checked the dictionary. The Latin root sincerus means “whole,” “pure,” “without additives” — like honey or wine before someone decided it needed improvement.

Today, we usually understand sincerity as communication without makeup: natural, open, from the heart. Simply put — when what you feel matches what you intend to do.

Psychologists point out something that surprised me: the main enemy of sincerity isn’t lying, but ..😱shame! and the fear of being seen not exactly as we wish to be.

Philosophers worried about this long before therapists. In Chinese thought there is cheng: when words match the inner state, when you’re in harmony with yourself and society. Aristotle placed sincerity in the middle — not bragging, not self-erasing, just seeing clearly. No embellishing. No self-sabotage. (Obviously, I’m simplifying — mainly to avoid becoming tedious.)

For a long time, sincerity was basically the backbone of moral life 🙏🙏. Later, it quietly stepped aside for a newer word: authenticity. Suddenly it wasn’t enough to be consistent .. you had to be “real.”

Add two modern pressures - image and reputation - and sincerity starts acting up 🤡. Image is what we invent about ourselves. Reputation is what everyone else invents about us. Sincerity messes with both — it’s hard to control and almost impossible to edit.

Still, sincerity has one very practical advantage. A sincere person doesn’t need a good memory. No versions. No cover stories.You say it — and move on.

At the same time, the opposite experiment already exists. There’s a movie about total sincerity: Liar Liar. The hero is a lawyer whose whole life runs on lies … to others and to himself. He’s amazing at it. So amazing he even forgets his own son’s birthday. The kid makes a simple wish: that his father would never lie again 🙏. And -here’s the dangerous part😱the wish comes true! What follows is total collapse. Legal. Social. Personal. It’s actually a brutal experiment: a world where you can’t lie at all turns out to be unbearable.

Personally, I get a similar side effect from reading… Tolstoy.)) Every time I read him, I want to stop lying completely. After two or three days, you realize: everyone around you already quietly hates you 🙂. So that experiment usually ends too.

And maybe that’s the real paradox of sincerity. It’s too honest for everyday life, too dangerous for love, and too alive for image. But in those rare moments when it shows up without effort, without announcements there’s this feeling that nothing needs to be performed.

And that brings us to the theme of our next concert:

The Art of Sincerity — and Sincerity in Art.