Your pants are on fire

Somebodys lied to me the other day. It should not really be such a big deal. People tell lies all the time.

Except I do not like being lied to.

It was very obviously a lie because they had told my workmate the opposite of what they told me. How stupid is that?

I felt a little disappointed, a little betrayed when I found out. As I always do when people lie to me. How can you trust someone who lies? How can you have a meaningful relationship with someone who lies?

Someone in my family, I can't remember who, said  you have to have a good memory if you are going tell lies. That is true,  I believe. It is no good telling a lie and then forgetting what you said. How can you keep up a pretense,  if you can not remember what pretense it is,  you are trying to keep up?

It is also true if you are going to tell the truth you need to have a good memory. In fact if you are going to speak at all you need to have a good memory, else without really realising it and unintentionally, you could tell a lie.

That is why, while I do not like being lied to, I try not to get too obsessive about it. I do know some people who are rabidly vehement they hate liaring but with my own ears I have heard them  lie. It was worth more than my life to point the lie out to them because they are so anti-lie telling.

However, I believe,  they believed, they were telling the truth at the time the lie left their mouth. Their memory let them down.

And the conclusion I drew from little incidents like that is  unless you have a photographic memory,  the chances are, you are going to misrecall something that happened and tell a porky. And the conclusion I drew from that is walk humbly and be ready to be corrected if someone does catch you out. Don't be dogmatic. Don't be proud. Be willing to accept you might have got it wrong.

So while I really do not like lies, it is lies of the intentional, deliberate sort that really rotate my rotisserie. Lies that try and manipulate me into doing something I might not want to do if I knew the truth. Lies that only give half the picture. Lies that tell me what people think I might want to hear. Lies that are told by people too gutless to tell the truth. Lies that try to get my sympathy vote.


I try very hard not to tell these kind of lies myself and while I am committed to truth telling, I am not that deluded to think that if put under pressure I might avoid telling the truth. Be careful not to think you are perfect in case you stuff up.

I can cope with lies that are told in innocence. My memory is not as good as it could be. Sometimes I don't remember a situation the way others do.  There is a chance I could tell a lie when describing something that happened.

But I would prefer people didn't intentionally lie to me unless they want to lose my trust.

PS. Mumma said a little white lie never hurt anybody but I am sorry Forrest on this occasion I believe Mumma was wrong. A lie is a lie no matter what colour it is. And that is all I want to say about that.