A Lie Is Self-Destruction

The problem with this is two-fold.  First of all, when you lie so effortlessly, you start to question the nature of those around you.  How can you have real trust and real peace in your heart when your lie appears to be reflected in those around you?  How could you really know you could trust someone - really know others were real - when you were full aware how easy it was to fabricate anything.  It was almost a prideful thing to be able to tell someone something and have them trust you completely, even offering up love, support and attention because of the lie?

The second problem is you really can't trust anyone.  Your life begins to become empty because of the old adage "Bird of a feather flock together".  A liar (even a reformed one) knows a liar.  It's like a scent that is given off.  Lying is a psychological process that has tell-tale signs.  If the pistons in your car rattle, you know it's a problem with the pistons.  You've heard them rattle before in the past, maybe in other cars, so the signs are easy to see.  Having been a liar it's compounded even more by the fact that you've BEEN those pistons.  You understand WHY they rattle on a much deeper level because you can empathize with them.  Knowing that they're failing is one thing, but understanding the very reasons they're failing is another thing altogether.

In my early 20s I was struck with an epiphany.  My lies may be affecting others in negative ways.  I was causing stress on others for no reason.  If I lied about problems then people in my life who truly cared about me as a person were suffering on my behalf over nothing.  There was no problem.  There was no turmoil in any real sense, but it was very much real to those on the receiving end of those lies.  And although I may have been pleased by the attention received from my actions, I had never given full weight to the fact that others were hurting on my behalf.  I also realized that the compounded nature of my lies was hollowing out my soul.  There's a very good reason why one of the Ten Commandments is "Thou shalt not lie".  Lies are a poison that corrodes the very structure of our souls and build into a dark resin which permeates all other actions and interactions with others.  It had been easy to go through life on a day-to-day basic saying "Well this person deserves these lies because..." or "No one even knows these are lies so...", but I knew they were.  God knew they were.  And so even those "white lies" that meant nothing at the time, opened the doorway to larger lies and stitched together a complex web of deception that finally broke through the wall of denial I had constructed around my heart and crashed down on top of me.

I often thought lies were easier on the people I interfaced with.  If I didn't want to attend a party, I just didn't want to hurt the person by saying I didn't want to go, so I'd say "Oh my grandmother is sick".  The problem there is that the person - who really was a true friend - would spend time worrying about me and my grandmother and would enjoy the party less.  On top of that, it would become a topic at the party and a lot of people would be really bummed out for my sake and call and check on me and worry and it would grow and expand.  What's worse, it would then reflect back on me and I'd end up having to manage this complex lie structure and it would literally wear me out trying to keep all the frayed ends of my lie intact.  Also, without fail, my grandmother would really become sick and I just KNEW in my heart (whether actual or not) that I was somehow responsible.

And now comes the problem.  We live in a society today where people have the "what does it matter?" ideal. "My life is crap so screw them."  "They'd do it to me."  Or they're truly in such a bad place that lies are all they have left.