no one likes being lied to. it has a way of making you feel dumb which is probably why trust forms the foundation of any meaningful social relationship. if you can't trust someone to tell you the truth then you're better off not knowing them at all. and rightfully so, for if someone is willing to lie to you about A then how do you know they didn't lie to you about B-Z
so imagine how i felt a few weeks ago when i found out that some of the closest members of my family had lied to me. the clues were all there and i honestly had kinda figured it out but i have,at times been prone to making wild assumptions, which i was trying to avoid, and reverted back to my scientific "unless its absolutely proven you can't really act upon it" mentality.
once it was blatantly laid out for me i was angry. but at that exact moment it wasn't really apropos to be angry so i contained it for a little while. later on that day i made a call to my sister. to my credit i kept my cool, even when my sister started raising her voice at me trying to defend herself and we ended the conversation with nothing really being resolved other than me calmly expressing my unhappiness with the situation.
to be fair it wasn't like they all got together and said "lets just lie to sean [my family calls me sean] if he happens to ask about ______". that is, there was no poorly lit parking garage where a group of willing actors met and entered into a red handed conspiracy. however, there was a certain amount of collusion and i did happen to inquire with certain family members about this situation which is when i was lied to.
further in the interest of fairness, everybody lies. but as a society we find it social acceptable to lie sometimes. lying to your boss about why you showed up two hours late to work with a black eye, lying to the cops about how many drinks you had, etc. its also more acceptable to tell lies to people you don't know (i.e. when the guitar player of the horribly shitty band you just saw asks you what you think and you say 'yeah it was good'). BUT certain people should respect and love you enough to tell you the truth no matter what. we humans are cute when it comes to justifying dishonesty. we say things like "well i didn't want to hurt your feelings" which is absolute crap. we lie to protect ourselves, not the recipient.
it just so happened that all of this happened at a major crossroads in my life. one where i needed to know that my family was my family and that they were behind me no matter what, even if we were separated by a great distance. which is probably why it stung so much, why i am currently hung up on it three weeks after the fact and why it is further fueling my general distrust of people which i thought i had made some serious progress on.
the point? don't lie. don't embellish. don't stretch the truth at least not to the people who mean the most to you. some short term grief might be saved by doing so but if you're found out it will only exacerbate the issue and the person will be that much angrier that not only did you do this shitty thing but you compounded said pain you were apparently trying to avoid inflicting by throwing an extra cherry of betrayal on top of the sunday just for good measure.
thank you. good night.
