Stories and Lies

Our theme for Winter/Spring 2008 at Creative Spirit Center is Share Your Story. Our inspiration is the tradition of sitting around the fire on cold winter nights and entertaining each other by telling and listening to stories. The stories can be completely made up, slightly modified, or the unvarnished truth (although using some creative license with detail and shaping usually makes the story more satisfying for the storyteller, if not the listener).

It's not stories that I am thinking about today, though. It's lies. Lies and why people lie. Recently I experienced being lied to and also witnessing a lie. The liars were of both genders, and that's all the identifying information I'll provide. My interest here is in the motivation to lie and my current attempt to understand it. In one case, although the lie was transparent, it was probably motivated by a need to save face rather than own up to an embarrassing lapse in judgment. We see this all the time in the public arena, so it should not be a surprise when one of our friends follows this course. The other lie was not so much transparent as baldfaced. Unfortunately for the liar, the lie had been discovered through some judicious investigation coupled with parental instinct. Therefore, the lie led to a double dose of whuppin'.

Lies seem to be the refuge of weakness. We believe that someone else has power over us and we desire to evade that person's legitimate or illegitimate interference with our desires. So we lie. Some lies are never found out, some are immediately found out, and most seem to drift around for a while in a moral gray area, where they color our impression of who we are and who others are. Our conditioning makes us lie, you might say. If we felt free and strong, we would not need to lie.

Do I ever lie? Sure. If I include exaggeration, omission, reframing (a popular form), polite white lies, and expressions of a convenient helplessness, a complete inventory might indicate that I lie every day. It is not often my intention to mislead. Usually, I lie to smooth a social interaction, save time, or avoid an unwanted experience. Lying, even in these benign forms, does erode my sense of honor, nobility, and safety. If I think about it, there is always something to say that is not a lie. Instead of exaggerating ("The car was going 90 miles an hour!") I could describe the panic I felt ("I thought I was going to be thrown from the car!"). Instead of politely lying ("I love your sweater!"), I could follow the example of Sir Winston Churchill, who, when introduced to an undeniably ugly infant, affirmed, "Now THERE'S a baby!" Usually, lying is a conditioned response. If we think lovingly about the meaning and power of words, we can usually find something to say that is completely true and, more frequently than not, in its own way, completely beautiful.

My recommendation: when faced with the temptation to lie, tell a story instead! It's more fun, it can lead to something positive, and instead of leaving you feeling furtive and sneaky, it leaves you feeling creative and free.