"The check is in the mail"....."No, that outfit does not make you look fat."...."And if I'm elected I promise ..."
People lie for many reasons. Some times it is done with good intentions in mind. No one wants to hurt a friends feelings by telling them they don't look good. When asked 'How are you?', nine times out of ten you will answer 'Fine' simply because you do not want to burden them with the pain in your big toe. Little white lies to spare others feelings are not bad. Like the ostrich, it's a way to avoid something unpleasant and hide our head in the sand.
There are those lies that are told in order to save face. Many a little kid has sworn their dog ate the homework. 'Lost' e-mails and busy signals explain why we didn't call back. Any number of illnesses allow us to miss those boring social events. Even these little mistruths are not too terrible.
When the lies are told to hurt others....that's were it becomes a bad thing. We nudge a small snowball over the cliff when we spread lies out of fear, anger or ignorance. That lie rolls along picking up others in it's wake and becoming bigger and bigger. The lie takes on a life of it's own, taking out the one it was aimed at but also leaving a path of unintended destruction in it's wake.
Even more disturbing is when we start to believe the lies we started. The lies we tell ourselves and build our perspective of the world on is like quicksand. It looks solid, but it slowly sucks us down until it swallows us whole. We begin to not recognise truth when faced with it because it isn't as comforting as the lie we have constructed. I'm not saying I don't lie. I lie just as much as the next guy. But I am a firm believer in that the truth shall set you free too.
So in the name of freedom:
I've never known a dog to eat homework unless it had been smeared with something yummy like peanut butter and ostriches do not stick their heads in the sand. That is a lie.
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