Lies I’ve told my 3 year old recently:
Trees talk to each other at night.
All fish are named either Lorna or Jack.
Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose.
Tiny bears live in drain pipes.
If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.
The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago.
Everyone knows at least one secret language.
When nobody is looking, I can fly.
We are all held together by invisible threads.
Books get lonely too.
Sadness can be eaten.
I will always be there.
― Raul Gutierrez
There’s a line. A neutral line between the truth & the lie.. We are standing on this line. Most days, we flirt with this line. We step forward towards the truth… unless there’s a moment … where something can become uncomfortable… we take a step back. We move towards the lie. An easy lie. A white lie.
We quickly come back to the neutral line. As if we never stepped back. As if we never lied. Or the lie was so inconsequential that it doesn’t matter.
We shouldn’t have to lie for answering easy questions like, “Did you eat?” “How’s work?” “How are you doing?”
We have answers for these questions, but answering them in itself can be so exhausting that we lie.
“Yes I ate”
”Work is good.”
”I am doing fine”
These lies don’t harm anyone because they aren’t hiding some bank breaking truth or life threatening situations.
But I have a strong feeling that these white lies are taking away something precious from us. They are taking away the space where relationships are built, they are taking away the joy of lying creatively.
We are in this space where we can’t say the truth because it’s exhausting and we can’t come up with funny lies because it’s exhausting. Sometimes people are exhausting. Entertaining them is exhausting. Talking to them is exhausting. So lies act as the conversation shortener.
Boring lies take away the intimacy of the conversation.
Kids lie to their friends to for fun. They create ghosts & witch stories about the old shed in the school backyard. They come up with reasons why the door is locked with a red ribbon. They convince their friend to visit that old shed after scaring the heck out of them.
Kids lie. Parents lie. Both lie to create interesting worlds.
Santa is the red dressed hot guy living near the cool northern pole. All year he is collecting gifts for kids and then every Christmas he roams the world distributing them.
Place your baby tooth under your pillow and a a Tooth Fairy will come for it or sow the baby tooth in soil, a tree will grow out of it.
God is watching. Everything happens because of God.
I wonder if parents pass their true beliefs about god to their children or they pass the version that keeps things interesting.
When I asked my friends, how often do you lie? They said:
“I lie when I try to appear to be happy. I don’t do this purposely, it comes to me instinctively in people pleasing situations.”
“There are petty lies, here and there, nothing major to anyone. Like if parents ask did you eat its always a yes. If I don’t wanna talk to someone, I am always busy for them, even if I am just scrolling.”
“I don’t think I lie to my friends ever. But I do lie to my family sometimes. I don’t want to hurt them in anyway.”
“I don’t lie. I hide. I hide things from parents that will create issues. Otherwise I am pretty chill.”
Wherever there is unfathomable acceptance, the need to lie disappears.
How often people lie to you is signal of how profoundly accepted and respected they feel alongside you.
To most people we say, “I’m fine,” but to a few people we start expressing ourselves, even when we don’t know what’s wrong. We say something that indicates something is not right.
Boundaries don’t keep other people out, they fence you in. You can waste your life drawing lines... or you can live your life crossing them.
— Grey’s Anatomy
I see a space between white lies and creative lies.
White lies takes away the intimacy of the conversation while creative lies brings people together.
The creative lies parents tell their kids, become life long memories.
Lying & morality
Yudhishthira went to hell for lying once in his life.
While Duryodhana directly went to heaven.
Do you think Duryodhana never lied or deceived someone? The whole Mahabharata happened because of his cunning and deceiving nature. The thing is he never claimed to be goody two shoes.
Truth was Yudhishthira’s identity, his vow. He was called Dharmaraja. He was judged against the standards he choose for himself.
While Duryodhana defined his own dharma as a kshatriya. His svadharma was to rule, to fight, and to die facing the enemy on the field. He did exactly that.
He never claimed to be good; he claimed to be a king. He was judged on what he stood for and he passed.
Lying has a dual nature. I can logically reason against and in favor of a lie.
We tell lies to our friends when they are building something and we want to cheer them up: their work is not really that good but you don’t want to demoralize them so much in the beginning.
We tell lies to our loved ones to not hurt their feelings.
We tell lies to protect ourselves.
Lying can be an act of kindness, manipulation, laziness, hope, & love.
There’s one truth and… many many lies.
So if you are going to lie, make it a good one.
Do you remember any memorable lies from your childhood?
