A lie

It’s bad not to tell truth. I guess most of us learnt that from our parents when we were little kids. But did they explain to us why it’s bad? Did they define what the truth is? I mean the main point that I remember from my early childhood is that lying is immoral. Pretty strong word, isn’t it? Not really helpful though, when the real life happens. How about “let’s not tell mom, she’ll be worrying” or “I’ll say that I was sick so that professor wouldn’t be upset that I’m not interested in his class”? A white lie? And I learnt rather quickly that there are 3 types of lie:

1)                   The worst one: when you are scared of saying the truth because you did something wrong and you are afraid of taking the responsibility (should be corrected if you want to feel better)

2)                    The ambiguous one: when you lie because it makes the other person happier or it safes him from unnecessary stress (yeah, you just say what the other person wants to hear)

3)                   The “ok” one: when you just don’t say something (well, the question is whether it’s lie or not at all?)

I also learnt that you obviously feel really bad when you use the first type, but you sometimes succeed in persuading yourself that you used two other types for good or at least that you didn’t do any harm to anyone by using them. Sometimes. But it doesn’t mean that you feel ok when for some reasons the truth is suddenly discovered and it stresses the other person even stronger. On the other hand, who knows, a lie can have save somebody’s life. There are dozens of example in the history; just think about the movie Life is beautiful. I meant, kids shouldn’t be brought up in the glass palace without knowing the real life, but seriously, who tells their children the whole truth about the world right away?

There is another question regarding truth and lie that actually bothers me even more the ones mentioned above. What is truth? I’m fine with facts: German army either crossed the Soviet border or didn’t, your boyfriend either slept with another girl or didn’t, your kid either got D- in his geography class at school or didn’t. There are no doubts what is truth and what is lie, there are facts. But how about all other areas, everything around facts, our impressions from facts: how about words, ideas, emotions, feelings, beliefs, opinions? Ok, we can agree that tastes differ and there is no absolute truth in opinions, everyone can have his own opinion and that would be his own truth. I must say that I met so many people in my life who doesn’t agree with that and who insist that there is one absolute truth in the world (and for sure it’s their truth).

The most obscure area is emotions and feelings. It’s so easy for me sometimes to persuade myself that I actually feel this or that emotions, that I actually want this or that, that I am actually happy with having this or that. The power of human imagination is enormous. I actually can persuade myself that I love black olives (while I really hate them) and I’ll be sure that it’s true! I can persuade myself that I like the book, the movie, the class, the story, the person…

My mom used to say that everything exists in our head; the world around us is how we see it. And I still don’t know how to understand then what the truth is, whether I really feel certain emotions or I just imagined them for myself, whether I really want to live that life or that role just became my essence? Because it was what I wanted at that time, because it was just easier in the situation, because I just wanted to make someone happy…