Recently, I had a dentist appointment. There were a few tense moments about the health of my gums, and a few astonished remarks about the length of my hair (it hasn’t been this long in at least 35 years), but there were no cavities. I told them I would get a haircut after being vaccinated, and that I flossed frequently.
When I go to the doctor I lie about how much I drink, how much I snack, about the faithfulness with which I take my medicine, and how often and vigorously I exercise. And as I get older and have to see specialists I will probably have to expand my repertoire. I’ll need to look into what endocrinologists ask, what kind of lies will make a Urologist happy, what is the best thing to say to a cardiologist. Maybe I can write a book. “The Idiot’s Guide to the Things Your Doctor Wants to Hear for Dummies.”
It isn’t limited to professionals, though. I lie to my co-workers all the time. Just because the truth is so dull.
“What did you do this weekend, Tim?”
“I won the lottery and gave it to charity. Huge tax write-off. Saved a bundle. And who needs all that money anyway.” It sounds so much better than;
“I did the dishes and trimmed my toenails and my wife and I got into a huge fight about who actually steals the blankets.”
To think about all the times I’ve complained about the way politicians, the clergy, business executives and members of the press lie makes me feel a certain sense of cognitive dissonance. I spend a lot of time, energy and emotion carping about ridiculous campaign promises made to win an election, fictional religious doctrine designed to extract loyalty and tithing, greed and corruption disguised as good corporate citizenship, and the practice of creating the news instead of reporting. It makes me think I’m kind of a whiner as well as a filthy liar.
Life is dull. Tedium reigns supreme. We go to work, come home, eat, watch television or read, and repeat. It is a maddening cycle of sameness. The pandemic has only made it worse, or at least more obvious. We do get to wear face masks, a small splash of individualism, but that is a small consolation for the complete sense of isolation and monotony. At its best, though, life is bland.
I just try to make it seem a little better with some minor fictional improvements. If you can’t create more tension and excitement in your mind than you experience in your life you either lead a very interesting existence or don’t have much imagination. And, I have a workable imagination and not much of a life.
Honesty may be the best policy, but it’s the one most often ignored. I’ve read about people using doctored pictures on dating sites, and there are people, and I am a proud member of this group, who take pictures of expensive, exclusive places they drive past on the way to some squalid little hovel and pretend on Facebook that is where they are vacationing. People doctor their accomplishments for resumes and social media profiles.
And it isn’t always impersonal and distant. During the course of my life I’ve heard the phrase, “I’m not going to lie,” or “I’m going to be honest with you,” so many times from so many people, it makes me believe that everything else they ever told me was fiction, why else would they have to qualify the next sentence so thoroughly. Or maybe they’re getting ready to lie and just want me to think they’re telling me the truth, or maybe they lie to me all the time and just need some introduction to the next paragraph of complete misinformation.
Maybe everybody lies. Maybe everybody lies almost all the time.
If a candidate for office told us the truth they would never get elected so they tell us what we want to hear. You’d never buy insurance that only covered what your insurance actually covers if you knew how spotty and inconsistent it was. If a car salesman said how overpriced and unreliable a car was you’d walk out and find somebody willing to tell you lies about how wonderful their car was.
We need lies to keep the ball rolling, the oil that keeps things from grinding to a halt. Maybe we should just be a little more honest about it.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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