Lying gets a bad rap. Let’s face it, somewhere between your mom, your teachers, your pastor, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, and those 2-tons-of-fun the Ten Commandments, lying is publicly flogged like a tired Clinton joke. It’s the whipping post of our sub-conscious, and it isn’t really fair.
Of course lying about a crime is wrong. You should admit those things. “Yes, I stole that." “Yes, I embezzled that.” “Yes, I stalked and hacked up my girlfriend, strategically placing bits of her along the landmarks of this fair city that came to represent our poisonous-hate filled-I-could-have-changed-for-her-really relationship. Careful, that over there is where we first confessed our love, the lying bitch. Guess what's buried.." – These are all confessions we should make. Especially the last one. Really. I’m not condoning that kind of conduct.
Yet the good-kind of lying, the sort of lying that rounds the edges of our daily lives, that’s the type of faking we should be a bit proud of and we aren’t. We toss it high onto our guilt-pile where we’ll drink it, snort it, or eat it into numbness.
What we are missing is the fact that we are bothering to fake it. Caring enough to lie means that you cared in the first place. Embrace that.
Okay, sure, your significant other is crying and you really, really, really want to feel something. But instead you don’t. You aren’t evil. You’re just tired. Either your day at the office also sucked or, well, you’re just tired of the crying. Whatever. They look up, all crystal eyed, and you freeze. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO? (A) Yeah, that’s too bad, Alicia, I really want to help, I do. But honestly, you’ve started to bore me and, ya know, Janet wasn’t being a bitch after all. You were. (B) Make a sad face. Reach over and hug them, promising it’ll all be better. And agreeing to everything they say. - - - Obviously, unless, you know, you like drama, you choose B. Which is selfish, yes, because you avoided a fight and possible physical harm. But hey, step back, and think that out. Put the self-preservation aside and look what else you did. You didn’t laugh did you, Big Boy? Nope. You didn’t switch on the TV. Smart move. You knew that would hurt her feelings. So you faked it because you cared. Uh huh. Breathe it in. You got a win-win there, Sport. Drink it deep. Sometimes we just don’t feel it. We can’t muster up the sympathy or the empathy or any pathy what-so-ever.
And it just isn’t in our relationships. Work is all about the faking. Not because we are lazy, but because that’s the game and we care just enough to do it. Oh, come on, you’ve feigned a laugh at yet-another-story about the boss’s precocious sugar-plum-princess. You’ve cluelessly nodded in a conference room. And you’ve went with the flow when talking to a co-worker with a thick accent that you can’t follow because you’re too embarrassed to have them repeat.
It’s okay, people. We don’t have to always be honest with each other. We don’t WANT to be honest with each other. Did we want Jennifer Love-Hewitt to be truthful with us when she went swimming? No. We want to be lied to. We NEED to be lied to. I need to think my boyfriend hates the same nasty bitches I hate. I NEED my Hollywood celebrities to be flawless, size 0’s because if they aren’t , well that’s one less thing to hate myself for, and really, I’m kinda lazy and don't want to go looking for or creating a new self-hate.
So go ahead, Jimmy-Jack, lay back, grab the remote, and wrap your arm around your girl. Soothe her and tell her it’ll be okay. It might not be all real, but hey, you are caring just enough to fake, and you should get something for that.
