As a child we learn early on that we should never tell a lie. When you tell a lie you get into BIGGGG trouble and most often children are not slick enough to pull it off. We are taught that the truth is the more important, even if you are going to get into trouble. As a teenager though, you learn how to lie. You get better at it, and test the waters realizing you still are not as slick as you think you are. This is followed by long punishments and embarrassing phone calls to your parents. As an adult you learn how to make better choices in situations. You learn the times where you should tell the truth and when maybe a lie, or even a little white lie would be a better idea. Still as an adult we are often not very slick, enabling gossip and betrayal to come around full force as the truth is revealed.
Lying is a funny thing to me. I am highly against it mostly because I have been lied to in some pretty significant moments of my life. This kind of lie, in the moments that matter, about the things that matter, cut pretty deep and leave you with a disgust for such things. Now I know lying happens, and I make bad calls and lie to others, but I try to make it a definite habit to not even lie about the weather to other people as I don't want lying to become part of my character. My dedication to not lying about small things makes me basically unable to lie about big things....I want it to stay this way as I do not think lying is ever really necessary. Now there are the few exceptions that mostly consist of lies that are for the other persons best interest; white lies mostly, but every situation is different and may need to be treated with great care before difficult topics rise to the surface.
I have been thinking about this lately as I met a really great guy a few days ago. He admittingly said he had trust issues and I could do nothing but sympathize. He has been lied to and had his heart broken in serious ways, just as I have, and it shows in his demeanor. It made me wonder how much my trust issues showed on a daily basis, and if a person I just met could see this inside of me. He was interested in seeing me again and so I didn't think twice about giving this great guy my number. Later in the weekend I ran into him again, a freaky coincidence. He said all the right things (beautiful eyes, such a nice girl, etc) and so he was winning some definite points with me. As the evening progressed we got into an argument about some silly hearsay that had happened between him and a friend of mine. We went back and forth with neither of us letting up, and the anger and hurt was just pouring out of him. I kept asking him, "How could this situation make you THIS angry?" And then it dawned on me how fresh his wounds must be. The anger was not totally directed towards me. The biggest problem was that he didn't trust a word I was saying and I didn't trust a word that came out of his mouth either. So basically the conversation was completely unproductive and went no where. I realized a few days later that two people who both have trust issues trying to date would be like fire and gasoline; a recipe for disaster.
Trust is the foundation for everything; friendship, work relationships, and romantic relationships.If people just didn't tell lies then there wouldn't be so many wounded people walking around angry and frustrated at the world. Why can't it be as simple as telling the truth to each other as much as possible, like when we were little kids?
Today I happened to read a book to my Kinders about this exact topic, "Bruno tells the truth." My kids looked at the words in AWE as they saw how Bruno lied to his mother about breaking the cookie jar. But then once he realized that lying was wrong he decided to be honest with his Mom and admit to his bad behavior. This is what happened;
Thanks for the lesson Bruno.....not only my Kinders got something out of that book today, I did too. :)
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