“Good kids cannot and will not tell lies”. I am not sure whether this is still taught or preached in junior schools. I remember asking my ah mah why do I have to be a good kid. It is a very innocent direct question. My ah mah replied, “ because ah mah wanted you to be good.”
Yes, I have been a good kid.
Not for long.
I remember I am asked by my MEEE to tell some caller that she is not at home. Apparently, she is…busy with chores. That is my very first lie. I remember. Very vividly.
I am not a good person but I am glad I am trying to be good by not telling lies.
We live in this society where everyone has to fight our own battle everyday. People cheat and deceive to achieve their aim and honesty become rare or almost dinosaurous. Sometimes we may even have the tendency to think that our aims or ends justify the means to attain it. Whether, it requires us to crack our brains to think about strategies to get things work or smoke-screens to get ourselves out of some tricky arena, as long as we reached the finishing line, we are happy. aren’t we?
White lies? What are white lies? These are merely some weasel’s bullshit to justify their act of deceit. I have encountered people telling me they lie to me for the benefit of an important reason or person. Now, this is a classic case of “the ends justifying the means of attaining it”.
Usually, for the benefit of the intended assumingly “goodwill” and the friendship, I choose to turn a blind eye because I think, at a minimum my friend still recognise that what he says is a lie. More importantly, I realise I have been through similar situations and all I can do as a friend is to empathise.
It is tough to remain on moral high grounds because your friends and loved ones will find difficult to communicate with you. Does honesty makes any forms of relationship stressful? This is another question that I find it difficult to answer.
Most people including me, don’t realise that when we lie, we are deceiving ourselves, because most of the time we regard the other party as an idiot where I think the greatest and the most gullible idiot is ourselves. But on the other hand, telling the truth may be the toughest thing to do. Besides, the requirement of immense courage, the toughest requirement is to understand what truth is. Like me, most of us don’t even know what truth is. It might have been so adulterated by layers and layers of daily deceit that the simple truth has been distorted beyond any possible recognition.
Perhaps truth is somehow situational and subjective. I am not sure about this. My friends have suggested that truth is a situational thing. One might be speaking the truth but somehow it might be misconstrued as a lie or strangely, it might turn out to be a fable later. Surviving in a dynamic society full of folks clinging on irreversible hindsights, the overwhelming inconsistencies created by them are not helping the rest to, at a minimum, recognise the faces of truth.
Every corner, everyone and every breath are constantly filled with sweet sweet lies. There are no forever friends or enemies and truth remains a relative space.
I am a fool to even ponder about the truth….
The truth is ………..Everyone lies
