Living a Lie

Truth is as we perceive it. There is no such thing as absolute truth as perceived by human senses. Everything we encounter is tainted by our prejudices, and we all have them. Our parents, teach us inaccuracies, as do our teachers, our religions and history. Yet these inaccuracies together make up our culture and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

George Washington did not have wooden teeth or chop down a cherry tree. No one ever threw a coin across the Potomac River. Paul Revere never made it to Concord – he was captured partway there… and there were three riders that night, not two. The United States sank the Maine, and used it as an excuse to declare war. If you run with a pencil you’ll poke your eye out.

How many lies are told to us “for our own good” and remain with us as truths? How many fictions are given to us as children to make our parents’ lives easier, and we pass them on to our children even though we know they are not accurate? How many poems or stories are written to honor heroes that contain exaggerations or are twisted to make the protagonist seem worse than he really was? Did the police use excessive force or did my child actually behave like they say he did?

We want to believe that people we know are good and discount stories about them behaving badly. We dislike someone or a group and thus believe the person or people could easily do wrong. Two hundred years ago the British could never be right; 150 years ago the South knew the North was wrong. Many people cannot forgive the Germans for starting the two World Wars or the French for simply being French.

Every person, every group has colored perceptions of other people and groups. Try to persuade someone that one of their “truths” is inaccurate and you become the enemy. No human is exempt from this.

Yet should we always tell the truth? Can it be a kindness to lie to soothe someone’s feelings or to protect someone we love? Is it honesty or dishonesty to present our perceptions as the total truth and possibly harm another person, or cause a country to go to war?

Mark Twain is credited with stating, “Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.” Sir Winston Churchill wrote, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”

Perhaps we should take the advice of Adlai E. Stevenson Jr., and apply it not only to the political world, but also to all our relationships and thoughts. During his 1952 presidential campaign he suggested: “I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.”

Honesty may be the best policy, but in today’s world it will not help a student pass a test (only studying will do that), it will not help you avoid a ticket, it will not correct a mistake, nor, it seems, will it help certain political aspirants get elected. But honesty and admitting your mistakes may make you a better person.