Every-time that I would hear (or read) someone say "Everybody lies", I would cringe. For a while I would say "I don't lie", but had to come to terms with the fact that even though telling your children that there is a Santa Clause, Easter Bunny, and Tooth Fairy is just a fairy-tale, it is still an untruth. So I needed to somehow dissect this thing called a lie. Because we know that some lies aren't meant to harm anyone, and some are down right devious. I decided to do this personal experiment to never lie. It lasted for a few months, but I learned a lot about lying, and a lot about myself.
When I first embarked on this query of mine, I asked my cousin Akintiunde (whom I respect immensely for his depth of knowledge), about lying, and that infernal phrase "Everybody lies". He basically told me that not all lies have malicious intent. That one statement said it all for me. I now understood.
"Most people......lie once or twice a day—almost as often as they snack from the refrigerator or brush their teeth. Both men and women lie in approximately a fifth of their social exchanges lasting 10 or more minutes; over the course of a week they deceive about 30 percent of those with whom they interact one-on-one. Furthermore, some types of relationships, such as those between parents and teens, are virtual magnets for deception."~Psychology Today
So as I decided to live my life without telling ANY lies, not even the little white ones, I didn't think that it would be too hard, and it wasn't, if I didn't care about hurting peoples feelings, or putting the company that I worked for, possibly liable to a lawsuit. Here are some scenarios that I went through whether they were thoughts that I had during this period of truth, or real life situations.
If a guy would hit on me and ask me for my number, I wouldn't just ignore him or give him a wrong number to get him off of my back, I really don't like treating people mean for no reason. I would just be as nice as I could, and let him know that I won't be giving him my number, and I don't like talking on the phone. If he tries to give me his number, I would tell him that I won't take it because I wouldn't call him, and that I don't even call people that I should. I actually still use those lines, because they are true.
When people say that certain babies are cute, and I think that they aren't (because some babies look like aliens, and shriveled up old men), I just try to smile and not say a word, because it isn't necessary.
If someone asks me if I think that a guy is handsome, and he isn't to me (because being handsome is subjective, and relative to the person with the opinion), I will try to just bring up other qualities that I see in him. I don't think that it's necessary to be truthful about something like that, because who does it benefit. It will only hurt the feelings of someone for no good reason.
There is one statement that I have made many times, and to me it IS the truth. But the religious and legal communities would call me a liar for saying it. It is that "I have never cheated on my husband." My husband was the only person that I had been with sexually until I was 31 years of age. Even though he had cheated on me repeatedly, I never had the desire to cheat on him. So once we discussed that our marriage was over, I no longer felt obligated to stay committed to him. My commitment was to him, not to God, and not to the legal community. I did not wait until my divorce to become sexually involved with another man. And there are many reasons for that, none of which is the business of any religious or legal community. It had to do with my own self preservation and morality. I still stand by that statement as truth. I won't let anyone take my 16 years of commitment to my husband, and try to turn me into an "adulterous whore"*, because of some religious doctrine that I don't follow, or a legal system that didn't protect me from being cheated on (nor would I want it to).
If a guy asks me, "Why won't you go out with me?", and the truth is "Because you're not someone that I would ever consider dating, because your grooming, hygiene, and vocabulary are turn offs to me. And I can't get past those things to even want to get to know you like that." I would absolutely never tell someone such a thing, because to me that is mean and unnecessary, although it may be the truth, what would it accomplish by being truthful? I would hurt someones feelings that would never be a part of my life anyhow, so what would be the point? So here is where I could see a lie being told, but I would try to find a truth that will work, like "I'm seeing someone." There's usually someone, and seeing someone doesn't necessarily mean dating. ;-)
At work, if you don't phrase your wording correctly, it could come off as discrimination and leave the company liable to lawsuits. And their are just some truths that you can't tell for the same reason. As someone that does the hiring, I have to be very careful of my wording. I don't discriminate, but if certain things that I say aren't worded correctly, I could be leaving the company liable. Then there are the times when you have a project to complete by a deadline, and you get a call to ask if it's done, and you say that you are, but you're not. You say it because you know that it will be done by the end of the day, but it's still a lie. I prefer to tell the truth and say that it will be done by the end of the day. I actually feel much better doing that.
My little experiment helped to reinforce my understanding that telling the truth isn't so hard, and it is very much worth it to know that you are truly an honest person. I also have learned that just because people sometimes tell the occasional white lie, it doesn't make them bad, it just makes them human. The bad part comes in with malicious intent, like lying to do harm to other people and lying so that you don't have to face accountability for your negligible actions. Lying for self gain is something that you have to live with, if that's something that you choose to do. For some, it's a part of survival, or they may believe it's necessary to get the upper hand. Lying to obtain the basics in life is something that may be necessary in some instances. Lying to make yourself look better in the eyes of other people, is something that I have issue with, and do not respect. And I'm not talking about the superficial things that people do to make themselves look better; I'm talking about lying about your circumstance or who you are.
I try never to lie, and I'm pretty good at it (not lying). I still talk about Santa Claus, and the Easter bunny, and you can best believe that I will be telling my grandchild that the puzzling picture that she/he drew, is a masterpiece. And I might have to tell rare uncomfortable lie to protect a loved one or protect my job. But you best believe if I do it, it won't be because it will make my life easier, it will be because not doing so would just be stupid.
When you allow yourself to tell a lie, and you make excuses for why it was okay to do it, it makes it easier to tell that next lie. I always try to find a truthful way to answer the hard questions that would be much easier to lie about. Once you make lying unacceptable to your life, and you learn how to tell the truth and face the consequences, it becomes easier to tell the truth, and hold yourself accountable for all that you do. You have to answer to yourself, if you ever tell a lie. You have to look at yourself in the mirror every morning, and decide if you like the reflection.......And I can say, that I do.
~L.A.F.
~L.A.F.
"Fortunately, marriage seems to offer some protection against deception: Spouses lie to each other in "only" about 10 percent of their major conversations. The bad news? That 10 percent just refers to the typically minor lies of everyday life. DePaulo recently began looking at the less frequent "big" lies that involve deep betrayals of trust, and she's finding that the vast majority of them occur between people in intimate relationships. "You save your really big lies," she says, "for the person that you're closest to."~Psychology Today
*"adulterous whore" is a term that I greatly dislike, and don't normally use; but used it in this instance to get my point across.
