How To Handle A Liar
Monday, January 9th, 2012
Everybody lies occasionally. We all do it. And so lies come with different monikers describing the weight of the occasion – names like: white lie, fib, exaggeration, etc. But they’re all lies – just different levels of lies.
Fact of the matter is that it’s one of those few things in life that is black and white. It’s either the truth or its not. If it’s not, it’s not truth-full and so the part where it’s not the truth, is the lie.
A white lie is often told to protect someone’s feelings – like when your wife just spent $250 at the beauty parlor and had her hair cut and the goofball ruined it and she comes home proudly, but looking like somebody else, you say, “Hey honey, you look real cute.”
Fibs are harmless lies that really don’t matter like telling your neighbor that you didn’t come to their party because you weren’t feeling well when you really went out to a movie instead. Fibs and white lies both fall under the same confusing category. The term “white lie” is pretty laughable when you think about it. Does the word “white’ make it OK? Is the lie more pure because it’s white? Is it cleaner? Pretty confusing.
And then there’s exaggeration – a fault that I’ve been accused of probably too often. I like to say when accused, “Well, I’m in show business. Think of it as promotion – making the success or the adventure or the story just a tad more interesting or dramatic or even a bit more heroic. But truthfully, I’ve learned to see that they’re all just a bunch of lies and that, essentially, if we slow down and think things out and live higher and more noble lives from moment to moment, we do not have to lie. Lying is just really a bad habit.
And then there are the inveterate liars… These are the people that have a disease – a dis-ease with the truth. They lie so often that they lose consciousness of the truth and lose the ability to discern between the two. Their lying becomes so habitual that they lose their connection with the reality of the truth and lie so often that they begin to believe their own lies — in essence, they lie so much that they even lie to themselves about lying. A vicious circle.
In my life I’ve suspected several and absolutely identified two. (more…)
