You know that scene in movies where a character will find out that the person they've trusted has been lying to them and then the pair have a massive fight, the climax of which, inevitably, is the character shouting something to the effect of "You LIED to me!" in a heartbroken, betrayed, relationship-shattering kind of way?
In my own life, I've never really minded being lied to. More to point, I suppose, is the fact that I don't mind being lied to because I lie so very frequently myself.
I'm told that many people do, and that there are all kinds of reasons for this: to spare someone's feelings; to avoid embarrassment; to appear "better" in the eyes of others, be that professionally, socially, emotionally, or what have you...the list goes on and on. Lying, for many, is as second nature as breathing. So it is with me.
I think the reason I don't mind being lied to is because the person I tell the most lies to is myself, so why would I object to someone else lying to me right alongside? Indeed, so many lies are told with "good intention" behind them, it only seems fitting.
My downright comfort with lying, near as I can tell, takes it roots, in part, in a desire of everyone to always be happy and be a peace and to get along, and the easiest way to achieve peace--that is, to give everyone what they want, even when those things are diametrically apposed--is to lie to one or all parties. I have been lucky enough (maybe?) in my life to never really get bitten too badly by being caught in a lie, so I never really learned to stop doing it. Additionally, the other part of why I find lying so natural is that it involves making up stories, and, loath my own reality as I do (and as I have for as damn long as I can remember) making up stories proves to make living in the world an easier thing to do than to accept truths that are far less rose-colored and infinitely more uncomfortable.
Substantively, the lies I tell are principally to myself, and nothing so juicy as to create fodder for a film script. No, my own lies center on experiences had (or not had), and, of late, hopes and dreams (or, again, the lack thereof). For example, I profess to a Christian identity in certain company, and an atheistic or agnostic identity in the wider world. I genuinely cannot say which, if either, is actually true. Other examples include: lying about being "very well, thank you" when asked on a daily basis how I am; lying about being able to cook; lying about knowing a good third to half the things I profess to know, be they historical, literary, or cultural in nature; and/or lying about what my interests are. (Truth be told, anxiety has robbed me of any "interest" I once had in cooking, reading, traveling, and most other actions that involve interacting with other people or feeling inferior to the same, which, of course, is damn near everything).
***
I remember having a conversation with my friend Scott on the topic of serial killers, and how he was surprised by my assertion that, given the option, I would far rather be charmed and lied to and tricked into leaving my home and then killed quickly by surprise by someone than the alternative of recognizing the killer for who and what he was. Odd as this conversation was, it revealed the fact that I desire to be comfortable at the expense of truth*.
Examples of this desire for comfort in the face of truth surface when I think about A) my (repeated) failed attempts at a graduate thesis wherein I tried again and again to write "truths" about literature and could not for the life of me find anything new/true to say about the texts on offer in the classes I was taking from the professors I had in the school I was in. I WANTED to read myself into Walt Whitman and sentimentality and affection and the futility and simultaneous restoration of soul that come from praising a world that is broken and a nation that is broken and a humanity and its members who are the most broken of all. Beyond that, B) I sought comfort by refusing to see the truth and futility of and in my romantic relationships. I loved, and loved deeply. But I think I have never been loved. That realization stings something awful, so I stayed and fought for men that didn't want me, because the truth was too terrible to contemplate and the comfort of even marginal companionship was better than returning to the misery of isolation and involuntary solitude. C) The greatest lie of all, though, I think is the one I tell myself semi-regularly which goes something like "I'm fine." I am not and have not been "fine" for longer than I can calculate. Surviving? Sure. Thriving? Not on your life. I lie to survive. To stay afloat. To keep myself from feeling the full weight of bottomless self-loathing that I've felt for 20 years.
So when those characters in those movies fight and scream and shout "BETRAYAL!" about lying, I have to wonder....is lying really such a big deal on the human level? Because, in my experience, lying has far more to do with the person telling the lie than with the audience to whom it is told. Lying comes from shame, from guilt, from exhaustion, from pain, from a desire for things to be neat and tidy, for comfort, or for love. That's all any of us want in the end anyway, right? Love. But then, I guess I just disproved my own point, in that lying doesn't in fact ensure any of those desired things...
I had a relationship that was built of secrets and lies, in many ways, but, confusingly, it was also the most open and honest relationship I've ever had, at exactly the same time. It went to hell in a hand-basket. Thus, in my next relationship, I assumed--quite wrongly--that I could avoid the issued of the previous relationship in this new one by being truthful all the time. That did not work either. (The second relationship failed for different reasons, or, I suppose, the same reasons, manifest in different forms. For while I was no longer lying outright, I was made to feel I should keep things unsaid, which is a form of concealment and lying by omission).
Lying has followed me from my youthful days of social anxiety wherein I tried and failed to act/lie to look more confident than I was, which transformed into lying about not being lonely or friendless or miserable, which became a falsification of intellectualism hidden behind stacks of books, quite literally, which became enhancing the events of my own life with the fictions in those books, in the vain hope that someone might someday find me worthy of love and time and attention if I had a good enough story to tell. It hasn't worked yet, but being loved for looks or sunny personality or talent or skill is less possible with every passing second of my life, and it wasn't likely when I was young. So. Lying to myself and others has gotten me to where I am now, which is alive and employed and housed and fed and safe and all the other basic standards for not in any danger whatsoever. What it hasn't gotten me is hope or peace of mind or love or companionship or determination or courage or anything else that might be worth striving for or considered noble.
I like neither the honest miserable me nor the lying, attempted fine me. And I know even less what other people might see and value herein. ........I do know that I wouldn't mind being lied to or taken for a ride or defrauded if it meant I was happy in the lie. I think I'd take the rose-tinted glasses and try to be content; I'd try to no see the shoe about to drop if a good thing came my way, if only so I could have the good feeling for as long as the ride would last.
(*Liner note: White woman that I am, I DO acknowledge that I have the privilege to hide in my bubble away from the uncomfortable truths of race inequality in this country, and thus I do not wish to shy away from that. Perhaps oddly again, I have no problem believing myself to be at fault for the indirect disadvantages of POC because of my background, and I don't wish to lie about THAT. Rather, my sea of deception is about myself and my life, and those directly encircled therein. Wider social issues, for the most part, escape the web of lies I've Charlotte's Webb-ed myself into. Here ends Social Justice Diatribe).
In my own life, I've never really minded being lied to. More to point, I suppose, is the fact that I don't mind being lied to because I lie so very frequently myself.
I'm told that many people do, and that there are all kinds of reasons for this: to spare someone's feelings; to avoid embarrassment; to appear "better" in the eyes of others, be that professionally, socially, emotionally, or what have you...the list goes on and on. Lying, for many, is as second nature as breathing. So it is with me.
I think the reason I don't mind being lied to is because the person I tell the most lies to is myself, so why would I object to someone else lying to me right alongside? Indeed, so many lies are told with "good intention" behind them, it only seems fitting.
My downright comfort with lying, near as I can tell, takes it roots, in part, in a desire of everyone to always be happy and be a peace and to get along, and the easiest way to achieve peace--that is, to give everyone what they want, even when those things are diametrically apposed--is to lie to one or all parties. I have been lucky enough (maybe?) in my life to never really get bitten too badly by being caught in a lie, so I never really learned to stop doing it. Additionally, the other part of why I find lying so natural is that it involves making up stories, and, loath my own reality as I do (and as I have for as damn long as I can remember) making up stories proves to make living in the world an easier thing to do than to accept truths that are far less rose-colored and infinitely more uncomfortable.
Substantively, the lies I tell are principally to myself, and nothing so juicy as to create fodder for a film script. No, my own lies center on experiences had (or not had), and, of late, hopes and dreams (or, again, the lack thereof). For example, I profess to a Christian identity in certain company, and an atheistic or agnostic identity in the wider world. I genuinely cannot say which, if either, is actually true. Other examples include: lying about being "very well, thank you" when asked on a daily basis how I am; lying about being able to cook; lying about knowing a good third to half the things I profess to know, be they historical, literary, or cultural in nature; and/or lying about what my interests are. (Truth be told, anxiety has robbed me of any "interest" I once had in cooking, reading, traveling, and most other actions that involve interacting with other people or feeling inferior to the same, which, of course, is damn near everything).
***
I remember having a conversation with my friend Scott on the topic of serial killers, and how he was surprised by my assertion that, given the option, I would far rather be charmed and lied to and tricked into leaving my home and then killed quickly by surprise by someone than the alternative of recognizing the killer for who and what he was. Odd as this conversation was, it revealed the fact that I desire to be comfortable at the expense of truth*.
Examples of this desire for comfort in the face of truth surface when I think about A) my (repeated) failed attempts at a graduate thesis wherein I tried again and again to write "truths" about literature and could not for the life of me find anything new/true to say about the texts on offer in the classes I was taking from the professors I had in the school I was in. I WANTED to read myself into Walt Whitman and sentimentality and affection and the futility and simultaneous restoration of soul that come from praising a world that is broken and a nation that is broken and a humanity and its members who are the most broken of all. Beyond that, B) I sought comfort by refusing to see the truth and futility of and in my romantic relationships. I loved, and loved deeply. But I think I have never been loved. That realization stings something awful, so I stayed and fought for men that didn't want me, because the truth was too terrible to contemplate and the comfort of even marginal companionship was better than returning to the misery of isolation and involuntary solitude. C) The greatest lie of all, though, I think is the one I tell myself semi-regularly which goes something like "I'm fine." I am not and have not been "fine" for longer than I can calculate. Surviving? Sure. Thriving? Not on your life. I lie to survive. To stay afloat. To keep myself from feeling the full weight of bottomless self-loathing that I've felt for 20 years.
So when those characters in those movies fight and scream and shout "BETRAYAL!" about lying, I have to wonder....is lying really such a big deal on the human level? Because, in my experience, lying has far more to do with the person telling the lie than with the audience to whom it is told. Lying comes from shame, from guilt, from exhaustion, from pain, from a desire for things to be neat and tidy, for comfort, or for love. That's all any of us want in the end anyway, right? Love. But then, I guess I just disproved my own point, in that lying doesn't in fact ensure any of those desired things...
I had a relationship that was built of secrets and lies, in many ways, but, confusingly, it was also the most open and honest relationship I've ever had, at exactly the same time. It went to hell in a hand-basket. Thus, in my next relationship, I assumed--quite wrongly--that I could avoid the issued of the previous relationship in this new one by being truthful all the time. That did not work either. (The second relationship failed for different reasons, or, I suppose, the same reasons, manifest in different forms. For while I was no longer lying outright, I was made to feel I should keep things unsaid, which is a form of concealment and lying by omission).
Lying has followed me from my youthful days of social anxiety wherein I tried and failed to act/lie to look more confident than I was, which transformed into lying about not being lonely or friendless or miserable, which became a falsification of intellectualism hidden behind stacks of books, quite literally, which became enhancing the events of my own life with the fictions in those books, in the vain hope that someone might someday find me worthy of love and time and attention if I had a good enough story to tell. It hasn't worked yet, but being loved for looks or sunny personality or talent or skill is less possible with every passing second of my life, and it wasn't likely when I was young. So. Lying to myself and others has gotten me to where I am now, which is alive and employed and housed and fed and safe and all the other basic standards for not in any danger whatsoever. What it hasn't gotten me is hope or peace of mind or love or companionship or determination or courage or anything else that might be worth striving for or considered noble.
I like neither the honest miserable me nor the lying, attempted fine me. And I know even less what other people might see and value herein. ........I do know that I wouldn't mind being lied to or taken for a ride or defrauded if it meant I was happy in the lie. I think I'd take the rose-tinted glasses and try to be content; I'd try to no see the shoe about to drop if a good thing came my way, if only so I could have the good feeling for as long as the ride would last.
(*Liner note: White woman that I am, I DO acknowledge that I have the privilege to hide in my bubble away from the uncomfortable truths of race inequality in this country, and thus I do not wish to shy away from that. Perhaps oddly again, I have no problem believing myself to be at fault for the indirect disadvantages of POC because of my background, and I don't wish to lie about THAT. Rather, my sea of deception is about myself and my life, and those directly encircled therein. Wider social issues, for the most part, escape the web of lies I've Charlotte's Webb-ed myself into. Here ends Social Justice Diatribe).
