Don't worry so much about ferreting out the truth. Take care of each other instead, says Suzie Coen.
A friend living in the States told me about a recent meeting with a new doctor, where she dutifully filled out all the required paperwork. “Hmm”, the doctor said, scanning her form. And then she stopped and gasped. The issue was the number next to “drinks containing alcohol per week”. My friend did the unthinkable: she had told the truth – “I figured two glasses of wine a night, so that makes 14.” The doctor was horrified and suggested AA. My friend was horrified and found a new doctor.
At a new clinic, my friend met a differently phrased question on the patient form: “Do you drink alcohol?” but she was ready now with the Irish answer of, “Not really”.
Don’t judge her. We’re all guilty of telling lies of omission to our doctor. We make wishful statements about smoking, exercising and drinking – mostly because we want our doctor’s approval. We can’t help it.
We all tell lies, and shockingly often. We lie about how much those new shoes cost or whether we read that book. We call in sick when we’re not. We say we’ll be in touch when we know we won’t. We say it’s not about someone when it is. We say we love someone when we don’t. We say we’re happy while in the dumps. People lie to friends. They lie to bosses. They lie to kids. They lie to parents. They lie to boyfriends. They lie to girlfriends. They lie to themselves.
Lies really should hire themselves a better public relations consultant, someone who could point out to the world at large that, as far as lies go, we’re all guilty.
Lies really should hire themselves a better public relations consultant, someone who could point out to the world at large that, as far as lies go, we’re all guilty. I bet you’ve probably told a couple of lies already today – I know I have, and I don’t think I’m particularly devious. Lies are a part of everyday life. But we don’t call it lying, we call it tact or social grace.
First of all, there’s all the little polite lies we tell each other; the small courtesies that are the equivalent of saying “Bless you” after someone sneezes. “Oh my God, you look amaaaaaaazing”, when they just don’t look amazing.
We have the save-my-skin lie: “Sorry I’m late, they found the holy grail in my garage.” Harmless, better than the truth, which might be, “I’m late because I couldn’t get off the sofa in time to be on time.”
Mostly, we lie to avoid telling the truth. It’s considered rude to say “No, actually, I would rather repeatedly take a flat palm to my own face all afternoon than listen to you give an incredibly pedantic account of the fight you had with your boyfriend at Ikea.”
Then there’s the lies we tell to those we love or who we want to love us. If you want to have love in your life, you’d better be prepared to tell some lies and to believe some lies. If honesty is what matters to you, you might as well embrace a life of silence and become a Trappist monk.
Some days saying “I love you” doesn’t feel honest at all, but it expresses a deeper truth that is necessary for the love to be sustained.
It is knowing which lies harm and which help; understanding that truth is a bendy concept and bending it to the best shape at the time. Only the very rude and the very young never lie in this way.
Life is too full of complexities and people are too full of contradictions to make a hard and fast promise not to lie. You won’t keep it. So, I’m tabling a motion to rehabilitate the lie. That an utterance be judged on its intent rather than its content. Kindness is king. And anyway, it could have been a liar who said the truth was the better thing…
Featured image via Unsplash.
This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2024 issue of IMAGE.
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