Telling Lie

When we were kids, adults always tried to pass their values, moral beliefs to use as guideline to live by. In order to avoid confusing us, many of those 'lessons' were water down to make it into simple black-and-white duality. So, we could easily pick the 'white', not the 'black'. However, as we are growing up, we learn that black and white are just the two extremes of a spectrum of 'greys'. As we learn more, we do have to cut corners here and there on those 'white' to shift our value beliefs and action into the grey areas. We learn that the world is not black and white. We often have to make compromises, consensus, on certain beliefs in order to be able to 'bend in' the crowd or society as a whole.

"Do Not Lie" is something bad that we were told when we were kids. The 'Crying wolf' is the prime tool for teaching such moral value. Yes, it will be what I'm gonna use to teach my kid. However, as we grow older. Yes, I still believe "Do Not Lie", however, the biggest difference is the 'but....' that I would add right after. The reason why we teach kids not to lie is because we don't want the kid to lie to us, and don't want the kid to lie to the teachers or another one else. It is because we believe that kids are not experienced liars. Their liars are too amateur that adults should easily spot out and parents would get into trouble with their little liars at school. Also, if the kids are good liars, we don't want to be lied to. However, we are getting older, we start to learn that lying is just another tool that can be used to serve our self-interests.

Not that I'm condoling lying as a good thing, but lying is definitely a double-edged tool that would hurt ourselves easily. Our society is based on creditability, lying destroys that. In some occasions, like in court, lying is crime. I also see that lying is a form of deception. The purpose of deception, regardless its form, the bottomline is for the self-interests of the deception creator.

When a kid lies, his/her instinct is because he/she wants to get something, maybe a piece of candy or a new toy. Or, he/she wants to avoid something, like physical punishment, being scolded, or deprive of watching TV. It is no difference for adults, just the stake could be higher. That's why we have financial scams, spam emails, fake goods, etc. The form of deceptions are different, but the goal is the same. Certainly, many of them are crimes. However, some 'wise' guys invent the term of 'sweet white lie (or Innocent lie)' to give us green light to lie in casual relationships. Are those so called sweet white lies really sweet? I'm not so sure. Nonetheless, to be honest, I wouldn't say I've never lied. Cos, that's a lie by itself. So do believe other adults making the same claim.

I'm not a good liar, I would rather not lie in most occasions. Cos, practicing to be a good liar seems to be too hard for me. I think I will get burn so bad before I can play with this fire. Also, if telling 'sweet white lies' are not so bad in many people's eyes, then being honest to admit 'little faults' should not be too bad neither. I just think that living a relatively honest life, and do not need to remember what lies I told before is a more comfortable. Keep creating new lie to cover the old one is just too hard for me, I don't want to live with such burden.