[in defence of lying]
I lie. You lie. We all lie. Lies are part of society. Society - civilisation - simply cannot work without lies. If you're pretending you are always honest - well I'm sorry but then you're a fucking liar! And no I'm not talking about mundane things like shouting at some person in the street "my, what a hideous jumper you are wearing!" (tho that of course is a nicely crude way of exemplifying the problem).
We lie all the time. Most the time without realising, but often enough quite deliberately, simply because telling the truth isn't an option. This can be a calculated decision (like when you're really hot on someone but you don't wanna seem all too keen just yet - you're just playing the damn game like all the rest of them), or it can be an act of self-protection, or a case of protecting the other from the harsh reality about yourself (tho one may call that calculating too, as you may want them to fall for you before they know what they've let themselves in for).
So you lie to (near-)strangers. But you lie to your close friends to, to those you love more than anything, to those you really depend on. You lie when you feel like hell but you don't wanna talk about it because there would be no point; or you feel they could not make you feel better, but they would feel crap in the end too. You lie when you feel like shit but you can sense that the other person feels even worse; so you wanna be there for them and pretend you're ok so they will talk about their own problems because you wanna help them.
You lie when you feel like crying "do you have any idea how much I need you right now, pleeeaaase be there for me, please hug me and make it all go away", but you know that they would be totally overwhelmed if you said that, because what is there to say, and they have enough issues to deal with themselves. So you don't say it, because you love them, and you are soooo afraid of losing them, so you prefer to keep them at all costs, even tho they have no idea how much you depend on them. It's ok, you try to find the best way. But you lie.
And then of course you lie about yourself. Not to everyone, not all the time. Sometimes you are honest, and you say "well, actually..." and then you try to explain, or elaborate. If you really trust the person, and if the circumstances are right, and if you feel like it, like really opening up. Sometimes. Most of the time you don't of course. Because that's just not what is expected. No one wants to know. And you really don't want to drown them in your shit, because they have their own shit. And nothing's gonna come of it anyway. They're gonna be shocked and disgusted, and they're gonna slowly edge away from you. So you lie.
And so we all live our own lives, struggling through this whole mess. And we lie, because there is no other way. We conceal, we embellish, we decide what to disclose and what to keep hidden. Sometimes out of self-interest, sometimes out of selflessness, sometimes out of pity or out of sympathy. But we lie. Don't pretend we don't. Because then you would be lying. Heh.
Sure, we all lie - to other people, to ourselves.
I used to enjoy it - but not anymore. It's been so destructive. When you create a false world, a false persona then nothing is real anymore. Nothing has value. That's not living. There are no happy memories in telling a lie. It's being trapped in a web of deceit that you can't remember why you started spinning.
Unfortunately, I still have to lie but it's motivated out of self-protection and necessity, which is probably as good an excuse as any. Any other type of lie, like the ones I tell friends from fear of rejection, makes me feel sick with shame. Every false word that passes my mouth is killing friendships. Every time I suppress a true thought I'm proving my weakness and insecurity.
I used to think people that honesty was naivity. I was wrong. Would it life be so much easier if we could just tell the truth all the time? Isn't that true freedom? I wish I had the freedom to acknowledge my dependence love for other people.
Posted by: Mark on Tue October 4, 2005 at 0:45This is true. We all lie.
Hmmm. 
I don't mind it, personally. You have to keep something private.
I dont think I could cope in a world where people where 100% honest. Bless the lies that make the world go round.
Posted by: Vega on Tue October 4, 2005 at 14:34I think I'm sometimes too honest, and a lie would be better, or at least keeping my mouth shut, but I'm just too lazy to think up a lie or to keep things to myself that I really want to get across. Sometimes when I think about it, I think, I'm such a witch, because nobody would ever treat me like I treat them, haha. 
It's that thing called being social that is supposed to make you lie to people. 
I believe at the end of the day still people have on their minds (
) what I'm voicing sometimes, but for the sake of society they keep it shut. 
[In defence of honesty]
People expect to hear lies - the truth confuses them. Telling a simple truth at the precise moment that everybody else expects you to lie/bluff/bluster is a good way to get out of trouble, or at least distract someone.
It can be a useful tool.
CCW
Posted by: Charlie Williams on Tue October 4, 2005 at 18:06