“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything”
~Mark Twain~
It's time to debunk the notion that there are good lies.
It takes a tremendous amount of energy to put on airs and keep a stiff upper lip every waking hour. Japanese and Brits are often similar at that level.
When someone asks: “What do you do?” and you haven’t worked a flyspeck in six months in your given profession, mechanical engineering, do you respond: “I’m a freelance engineer”?
When someone asks: “Do you like your job?” and you have been complaining about it to everyone in sight for the last few years, do you respond: “Oh yes, I just got a promotion. My work is very interesting and challenging”?
When someone comments: “You have a beautiful family. You must be so proud of them all!” yet you are a few heartbeats from divorce, do you respond: “Oh yes, I guess I’m quite fortunate”?
A lie is a lie. The difference between a white and a black lie is minimal because the effect is the same. It is meant to deceive or distort reality in order to put yourself or another in a better light or avoid conflict.
If we are hungry and decline food from a donor simply because we don’t want to be impolite or disturb the person offering, then we will likely starve to death. Food is basic and absolutely essential for our survival. Good form would be totally foolhardy in such a case.
We must somehow learn to be comfortable in our skin, no matter how embarrassing a situation or admission may seem. To sweep our true emotions under the rug and concoct a story to fool others is like drinking a slow-acting poison.
If you have no job, keep asking and looking. Don’t look like a dog with its tail between its legs. The greater shame is living in a state of denial.
When someone asks whether you like your job, why not respond, “It’s paying my bills, but I’m looking for something I can be more passionate about”?
And if asked about your “ideal” family life, why not avoid dishonesty by at least commenting, “There have been some good moments”?
Good form usually – no, ALWAYS! – detaches you from your true emotions. And over time, this detachment desensitizes you from who you are in essence and what you have to do to find a modicum of true happiness in your life.
If you are a druggie, a nicotine addict, an over- or under-eater, a kitchen drinker, or work out until you bleed from blisters…then you are your own worst enemy.
I am not saying you should confess to every person you come in contact with; what I am saying is that the energy you waste putting on airs and juggling lies could be put to better use becoming a person of credible character.
Why not decide to be absolutely genuine from this moment forward. It won’t happen over night, but it can happen.
Let your hair down.
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Respectable advice, encouraging others to let their hair down and be truthful to themselves & others, but your recommendations of how to do this are as much a lie as what you are denouncing.
You recognised that a lie is “meant to deceive or distort reality in order to put yourself or another in a better light or avoid conflict”, and for our purposes this is an adequate definition, yet you neglected mentioning how communication from one individual to the next may use a seemingly simple and literal sentence yet the interpretation of said sentence means something completely different; hence a lie, or a defensive deflection from the truth, can be constructed by representing a reality that is either so general the person speaking may as well have said “no comment”, or the reality offered is entirely truthful, but given in such a way that its specifics are intended to be generalised, creating a false impression.
For example, using your example, when someone asks whether you like your job, and you respond, “It’s paying my bills, but I’m looking for something I can be more passionate about”, you have in fact answered nothing. You’ve given away no detail and have provided an answer that most working people would give. I’ve no idea if you’d be considering a career change or if you want a different assignment of some sort. If you don’t open yourself to others, the likelihood is you do not open significantly to yourself.
Another example is if asked the same question and you respond the same but also with a truthful anecdote about an event, say about something amusing. Here you are sharing specific details yet simultaneously creating the falsehood that your employment is generally quite amusing. This serves only as a distraction from your true opinions about your job.
Yet is this not perhaps, in a small way, necessary? If we let our true emotions govern us then we are nought but impulsive reactionists. If humankind’s true essence is as Hobbes claims then we are entirely self serving & brutish and will never be content until we lead a workless life of luxury & excess.
Is it not that “good form” or “a stiff upper lip” can strengthen us through difficult hardships and lead us onto greater victories than if we simply caved into our emotions and walked away? Is a stronger marriage that which has survived hardship or that which is nostalgic & rose tinted? Is a worker more proud of his product that he didn’t break into a sweat for or that which he worked until he “bled from the blisters” to accomplish?
Although letting your hair down (and trust me, my hair is always down) is exceedingly healthy, so too is tying your hair back and tackling a difficult obstacle healthy for the spirit. Sometimes keeping good form can work to your benefit for, although you may be denying your feelings to yourself, these feelings may actually be hiding your reason from yourself. While it may be true that if you keep telling others you’re “OK” you will come to believe this and keep unhappily ‘plodding on’, it is also true that if you share your present sentiments as fact often enough you will come to believe them as what you truly feel.
Only time will tell what the correct discourse is, but only the self-reflective, critical, individual may reason what they believe their best discourse may be; my suggestion is that maybe this ought to be done without inviting the assuming advice & interference of others whose “knowledge” is based on your immediate, desperate passion.