When is a Lie a Lie?

I was about to sign off this morning after talking to someone I have yet to miss a day talking to for the past two plus years when someone I talk to occasionally logged on. This person I have always enjoyed talking to. Their wisdom far exceeds their age and I have always valued their opinion.

We did not talk about lies or "untruths" but the jist of the conversation got me to thinking afterwards, at what point is a lie considered a lie? When I think back about it, I believe the first lie I ever heard and the first I repeated was, "I don't lie." The more I thought about it the more I realized that at some point we all lie or have lied. And I also realized that we will go through life repeating that. Whether it is for ourselves or for someone else something will present itself that will put us into a position that we feel like the truth would better be left unsaid. It could be that we do not want to hurt someone's feelings, or that we are avoiding talking about something, that by telling the truth would get us deeper into some sort of trouble we would like to stay shy of, for whatever the reason a lie will be told. Some will feel guilty and remorseful about it, while others won't think twice about it.

Does it take lack of a conscious to lie and not feel bad about it? Does it take conditioning to build a callous about you so that it does not bother you? Yes, I have lied, more times than I can count, more times than I care to remember and seeing how I have always been told a lie is remembered much longer than the truth, it makes me wonder if the lies I have told out number the truths. I think I mainly lie to avoid things, like facing the truth or avoiding the inevitable circumstances that telling the truth might manifest. For some and maybe for me telling a lie is much easier than telling the truth. I do not feel comfortable about it when I do, whether it is to someone close to me or a stranger. It is not something that is rehearsed or thought about and I definitely do not like back tracking on a conversation trying to remember what I have told someone as a lie. Then there is that fear of being caught in the lie and if at that point you will confess it or cover it up with another lie.

Are there different levels of lies? We have all been told or have said, it was just a little white lie, nothing bad. But is there a distinguishable difference in the type of lie that is told? Personally I don't think there is, I believe a lie is a lie no matter how you look at it and that there is no such thing as a little lie. And is it a good thing to avoid the truth to keep from hurting someone's feelings? Would it make them feel better to know the truth had been kept from them and then finding out that what they were told was a fabricated truth? That would be very superficial of them if they did. But none the less I have found myself guilty of that on various occasions. Telling myself it was for their own good or that old, what they don't know won't hurt them. I think it compounds the situation and would make hearing the truth much harder on them, especially if it was from another source, because the first person they are going to confront is the person who told them the lie and not what we felt we were shielding them from.

Staying on this path of thought I took it a bit further. When we do not present ourselves for who we really are, does that constitute a lie? Trying to deceive another of our identity. I will use the web and the various messenger services offered as an example. What is the first thing we do? We create an ID, a pseudonym of who we are or how we want to be seen. Some create multiple ID's and then use them to gain information on another or to see if they are being talked about. Would not deceit in this manner be considered a lie? We are not being truthful as to who we are, we are secreting ourselves away and hiding behind a fictional ID. How can one say they never lie when they are not showing who they actually are? Everyone knows me by my given name, I do not care what I do, that is how they know me. I have only changed my ID once, the one I am presently using, but my given name is there, not one I have made up. Some say they do it to protect themselves and to keep people from bothering them, if they are all that honest wouldn't telling the person in the beginning curb a lot of that and set those "boundaries" as to how you expect to be treated?

When do we start lying? When or at what point in our lives do we discover that telling a lie will circumvent getting into trouble? For me it was to avoid punishment from my parents and school teachers. I mean back then they were considered authority figures, ones who wielded a lot more power than I had, until I learned the power that a lie wielded. I had yet to learn at that time the flip side of that coin, the consequences when you were confronted with the lie you told. Once I found out I could get away from certain responsibilities with a lie and especially not getting caught, I found my lies more brazen and easier offered than the truth. And it wasn't as if I was the only one who was lying. I heard the excuses everyday, some very familiar to me. I do not know how many times my dog ate my homework, even the times when I didn't even have a dog, but he still ate my homework. How many grandparents do we normally have? For most only four, but yet mine died multiple deaths. We have all skipped school, when you went back did you tell the office the reason you weren't in school was because you skipped going that day, or did you offer a note from your parents that you drafted and signed one of their names to? Or that lie we told to spark jealousy in someone else or to turn one friend against another, yes a rumor, but again isn't that just renaming what it really is? To gain the favor of another we have told lies.

We have carried that concept on into our adult lives too. Bill collector calls, you want to avoid them, "Tell them I am not here." "I put the check in the mail yesterday." "I just opened a new account and they have not transferred funds yet." You call your significant other, "I am working late tonight, don't wait up for me." You tell you significant other "I don't know how that got in there, someone at work must have put it in my pocket." "It isn't what you think." The list goes on and on.

I have never been ashamed of who I was, just a specific situation I was in and yes, I lied then too. As we all have. Whether in a relationship we were wanting out of or trying to avoid responsibility, a lie was told. I am not quick to point out the lies of another, that brings it too close to home for me and I honestly feel it is not my place to do so. But none the less I know I have been lied to. We all embellish stories to make them more interesting, especially if we are the focal point in it or to downplay ourselves in it. We have lied to pull ourselves out of the middle of something or to divert attention away from us and on to something or someone else. We have offered others up as sacrifices through lies.

Countries, dynasties, legacies, friendships and relationships have been built on lies in the past and they will continue to do so in the future. No matter how honest we like to think we are or to get others to think of us as, we will lie in some shape form or fashion. We will lie to hide something, to avoid something, to escape something or for the plain reason we cold not think of anything else to say. I am not condoning it, but I am not going to be the one judging another for it. We just have to learn to accept the good things we see in the other person and go from there.

So at what point does a lie become a lie? There is a saying, "You can fool some of the people all the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all of the time." But it has been tried ages beyond eons. If the whole believes it and you are the only one who knows it is a lie, does that make it a lie? If it isn't a lie, but rather a dream or a wish, would that be a lie? If it is nothing more than what you believe, is it a lie? And if repeated enough to where you believe what you are saying, is it still a lie? Nothing is easier than self deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true....

I guess Sir Walter Scott said it best, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."

Later...