Yeah, so lying ain’t really that easy. It’s harder to remember. And…it’s a great setup for disaster.
I’ve seen people lie about things that they really didn’t need to. I mean, you shouldn’t need to at all, but it’s so much more confusing if it’s just random. And I’ve seen people just slightly upgrade the truth to what the wished it could have been.
Then it hit me one day. After a no-pressure interview that was going well for the interviewee, I picked up on some “facts” that didn’t pan out. It made me wonder why he felt he needed to lie. I landed on two answers (really just one, but with two angles).
- He wanted me to think better of him than I would have if I’d known the truth.
- He wanted something to happen that would be more likely to happen if the facts were “improved”.
That revelation messed me up for quite a while. Where was I doing this very thing? Maybe not on purpose, but I’m sure I must be doing it. Just a nudge here or there to improve things. I needed to some brutal self-reflection to sort this out. I needed to know that who I was and what I desired were “good” and didn’t need any outside help.
Lying may be easy, but as the quote continues, “strength is in truth”.
I don’t want to miss out on the strength that comes from the truth. I don’t want to “hedge my bets”. Where’s the strength in that?
Of course if my beautiful wife says, “Do I look good in brown? Tell me the truth.” You can bet I’ll be mimicking Pilate, “What is truth?”