To lie or not to lie

Ok, so this is an age old dilemma, is it ok to lie? And if it is ok, where does one draw the line? And the answers will always wary depending on who you ask the question to. From a moralistic point of view, of course, it’s never ok to lie. No matter what the reasons you can never justify it. We’ve all heard this piece of advice time and again from countless number of people and yet it’s somehow the hardest thing to do. It’s a simple thing really, to just tell the truth but if you try and remember you probably wouldn’t have come across a single person in your lifetime who could claim that he/she is a perfectly truthful person.

The reasons why people lie are simple too. Children usually lie to get out of scrapes; if they have got into a mischief or have done something that they weren’t supposed to do, they would lie in order to not get into any trouble with parents. But things get complicated once we grow up, and we lie for different reasons. Employees lie at work often, but why? What are the chances if you go up to your boss and say that you want a leave because the weather is too good to be hiding behind a mountain load of files? You would be snubbed out unless your boss is an angel, and that is why so many people lie at work.

But not considering these trivial lies, the main reason people lie is to spare other people’s feelings. It isn’t always easy to tell people what you feel especially when you don’t have flattering views about them. What does one do in situations like these? Well, handling this isn’t always easy. Of course, in a fit of truthfulness you shouldn’t just go around telling people that they’re fat or stupid or ugly. The best thing to do is to not say anything unless asked and if asked there’s always a better and a gentler way to frame words so that they don’t really feel like hurtling bricks.

But I’m of a view that you should always tell people the truth about how you feel and what you want rather than keeping them in the dark, especially in a relationship. Sure it would hurt, but it would hurt only once. When we lie, we need to keep on saying one lie after the other till it builds up into one big rock of lies and sits heavy on our conscience. If we tell the truth, no matter how bitter, at least people would respect the honesty, and in any case it would save us from getting into sticky social situations.

Then of course, not everyone can be truthful. There are people who lie about things for no apparent reason; these are called compulsive or pathological liars. Such people would lie about trivial as well as important things out of habit and in most cases these people genuinely can’t help it. It is useless trying to reason on confront such people, the best thing to do for them is to see a specialist who can help them cope with it and recover.

The rest of us are situational liars. While it’s ok to lie once in a while about harmless things to get out of trouble, it is always advisable to think twice before saying something untrue that might hurt someone we care about. Sometimes the damages might be too extensive to correct.

Linus Orakles
http://www.authorclub.info/