The Truth about Lying

One thing I know is true -- we all lie. For most of us, the lies are small social lies, like "I can't, I have a headache," or "I would be happy to help you with that," or "I don't know why he acts that way." They are lies of convenience, or lies designed to keep us from hurting another person's feelings, or from having to explain a long complicated situation to our mother, or to keep someone else from worrying about us doing something they think is dangerous. Sometimes we lie because someone asks us a question that is none of their business, and we don't want to confront them with that truth, so we lie to avoid answering the question. We become so accustomed to lies, that we expect to hear them on a daily basis, from almost everyone we know. We even become human lie detectors, secretly smiling when we discover the "truth" when someone has lied to us, telling ourselves proudly, "didn't fool me!"

Then there are the professional liars. The Liars Without a Pause. They lie to everyone, all the time, it becomes their very nature. They don't lie to protect someone else, they do lie to make themselves look better, wealthier, smarter, luckier than everyone else. They lie to manipulate others, to obtain things from others they would not get without telling the lie. They lie without remorse, or guilt. If they ever say "I'm sorry" it is because they are sorry they got caught in the lie.

Some people tell a lie to tell the truth. They may write for a living, and they need to create complex worlds and characters in their heads, and have them say things to advance the story. They lie so well, that people believe that fiction is the truth. Maybe it is, maybe we can accept the truth in fiction, but we don't want to accept the truth in life. We have to change the names to protect the guilty, and we have all known people that are just exactly like someone we see in a movie, or on TV, or read about in a book.

For whatever reason we have to learn to deal with lies in our life. We will lie, and we will be lied to. I've thought about it a great deal, and I believe that the thing that actually ended my relationship with the two N's in my life was that they lied so much about things that were important to me, that even though I could forgive whatever it was they had done, I couldn't forgive any more lies. My dad is also a N, and his constant lies have caused such discord in our family, that some of us actually tell other people he is very sick and that is why we never invite him to any family functions. He is sick, but not in the way people interpret what we say.

Earlier today I read a post about whether or not we should go NC with someone who is a liar, and I thought about how lonely that would be. Because everyone we know, including us, tells lies. So the truth is, unless you want to live alone, on an island without a mirror (so you can't look at yourself and tell a whopper) you can't discard all the liars in your life. I think what you have to do is become more discerning. You have to turn up the knob that lets your lie detector alarm go off when someone starts telling you a big one. Then you have to decide if the lie is harmless, or entertaining, or is designed to tear your world apart.

If you spend too much time with a Liar Without a Pause, your world will be adversely affected. It's not that you are so good that you will never tell a lie yourself. It is that your HEART is too good to tell someone a lie that is designed to destroy them. Liars Without Pause will eventually destroy themselves, because they even lie to themselves. Nothing in their world is true, and there fore they can depend on nothing. They are actually Nothing. You need something, not nothing. And that's the truth!!!!!