You may like them or hate them, but remember they are all around! Lies, lies and some more lies! We listen to them everyday, we tell them everyday and more often than not, it's become a habit! A habit that's get away with! Is lying bad? Yes, it is! Then why do we lie?
The other day, I caught a bus back home from college and there was a lady sitting beside me talking loudly on the phone and hence I was forced to overhear her conversation. She kept telling she had reached her destination, when the last stop was more than half an hour's journey away! Poor friend or whoever of her's who was waiting for her at the other end. This is how we lie!
Telling lies starts in our childhood- may be for the chocolate that we ate without permission, maybe to hide some little naughty prank that we've played! And as we grow up, the lying continues! We lie to escape punishment, we lie to hide things. The older you get the more the number of lies you tell and the bigger your lies get. And then there are those white lies-An often trivial, diplomatic or well-intentioned untruth. Lies told to be courteous, lies told to sound polite. But once we get used to this habit of lying, it's hard to avoid. It becomes a part and parcel of our lives. We begin to lie without even getting to know that we've lied. Professionals- aren't we?
Lying is considered to be cognitive skill. Lying requires brains. And we are proud of ourselves when we are able to hoodwink others into believing something that's not true! And what if we are deceiving ourselves? Yes, we lie to ourselves. We are the best judges of of our character and nobody knows us better than ourselves. But most of time, we lie to ourselves. It maybe because that's the easy path. It maybe because we are not comfortable accepting ourselves the way we are. Gradually, this lying to ourselves masks the true person within.
Yes, it takes creativity to lie. It takes creativity to escape punishment. But can't you use that creativity for some other useful purpose? Initially, we may have that guilty feeling which tells we're wrong. But many times, our conscience doesn't prick us anymore.
Lying has it's benefits and that's why we lie. Honesty may not be the best policy always. But lie only when circumstances demand you to. The world would be a mess if everyone went on telling the truth. But that doesn't mean we need to live on lies. Lies may feed our ego, lies may help us escape punishment. But, let it not become a habit!
“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain
So keep your memory reserved for better things!
