About lying

Here's the thing about lying. I'm angry that I was caught out blatantly lying, and not even because I fucked up. Because when people lie to me, they usually forget that I have a decent memory, and then they do this: they tell a story that is different about the same thing they have already told a story about.

And the thing they are thinking is that it's okay because they're claiming the story is now the truth. Yeah, okay, it's good to come clean, but the fact now is that you are stone cold caught as a liar because you told diametrically opposite stories. And I'm not keen on lying: I sort of feel the world becomes harder to live in if we do it too much, because at base we only have each others' stories to depend on as descriptions of the world, and of ourselves (and consequently, because the seed of the image of you as liar is planted, the image will flourish and you will never be taken to be correctly describing the world for others again--it's of course the moral of the Boy who cried wolf). So yeah, I do prefer a hard truth to a softsoaping, and I rarely lie to others, even when I know it would benefit me. I think that it has been one of the worst facets of the past four or so years, that I have found I've had to lie, including sometimes just living the lie, iykwim, and I had been so strictly honest in the years preceding.

Well, what good did either do me? Honesty brought me a life in which I had sold myself short; and dishonesty simply undermined my integrity, making it harder, bizarrely, to get away with lying when it became necessary, and worse, much worse, making me unsure what the truth is, so that I did not only mislead others but cast myself adrift.

Now I cannot, I feel, return to rectitude, because the outcome of it is too likely to be bad, but I regret straying from it. Not that I feel I could have done differently, but it is easier to suffer when you feel you are an honest man in a cruel world than it is when you feel you are no better than anyone else.

posted by Dr Zen @ 4:04 pm