"is it kind? is it true? is it useful?"

There's a fascinating article by Amy Bloom in this month's O(prah) magazine on honesty -- that is, navigating the shoals between telling the truth and not hurting people's feelings -- or, as Bloom puts it, how to "be who I am and to have a life" while juggling her inclination towards bluntness with (in her mother's view) "the necessary moral speed bumps that [make] it possible to navigate social life" (e.g., social white lies -- "I was raised by a woman who routinely said 'Oh, I'd love to' when she didn't, and 'Oh, I can't possibly' when she could"):

Sometimes this leaves me stammering. And it has made me a great admirer of Judy Garland not only for her spectacular talent but also because after she saw a friend in a terrible play, she is supposed to have come into her friend's dressing room smiling, and said -- without resorting to even the whitest lie -- "How do you do it, my dear, night after night?"