There has been so much in the news these days about dishonesty, “fake news”, spin doctors, and distorting the truth. I found a couple of quotes about lying that made a lot of sense to me:
“Truth is completely spontaneous. Lies have to be taught.” – Buckminster Fuller
“The advantage of telling the truth is that you don’t have to remember what you said.” – Rita Mae Brown
The older I get, the more important the absolute truth has become to me. Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie A Few Good Men, famously shouted, “You can’t handle the truth!”
But honestly, that just isn’t true.
The truth always comes to light. What is done in darkness, always comes to light. So when we lie, not only does the person or entity who we lied to have to “handle” the uncovered truth, they also have to “handle” that they trusted someone who lied to them.
“Every lie is two lies – the lies we tell others and the lie we tell ourselves to justify it.” – Robert Brault
I feel like a sick-in-my-stomach teenager just writing this post. There are few things in the world that make you sicker to your stomach than lying and/or being lied to by someone you trust. We all probably can remember that feeling when a parent or an authority figure or someone we loved deeply looked at us with grave disappointment and stated that they did not know when they would be able to trust us again to tell them the truth, after we told them a careless, hurtful lie.
“Telling lies and being deceitful takes so much more energy than being honest and sincere.” – Stephen Aitchison
I wish that we all had to the courage to live our truths, be our truths, and honor our truths. Everyone is so concerned about what other people think about them, how they are being perceived and what persona to take on, in order to get the things they think that they want in life. Lying is a natural outcome when we are living other people’s ideas of who we should be. If we are living in truth, emboldening the truth, then it follows that lying would not be possible. Truth and authenticity would be our only way. Frankly, there are many people who we don’t particularly like in life, but we respect and trust them because we know firmly where they stand. I would rather be a respected and trusted person, than a popular false persona whose choices and thoughts change on the whims of others’ impressions of me.
“A liar will not be believed when he speaks the truth.” – Aesop