1 - Lies: Cataracts on the Soul

 

                                                     "What?"
                                                    "Honest!"
                                                  "Who, Me?"
                                                "The cat did it"    
                                               "Read My Lips"
                                            "Next time, alright?"
                                           "Don't you trust me?"                            
                                         "It's for your own good."
                                       "Where did you hear that?"
                                "This hurts me more than it hurts you"                     
                             "I don't know what you are talking about"           
       
I was on-line the other day, cruising the front page of The Huffington Post when I came across an article titled: “When Telling a Lie is the Right Thing to Do.” In it, the authors pose the question, “…is speaking the truth always the best thing to do, specifically when it may cause yourself and others suffering or psychological damage? Are we not also exhorted to be compassionate and wise?” The authors go on to describe a hypothetical situation where a cleric of some religious or spiritual order deftly evades the dilemmic posed to him by a "a wild-looking man with a patch on one eye" who is looking for a woman who has made unsubstantiated claims regarding his intent, and who has taken, unbeknownst to the wild looking man's arrival, refuge in the monk's cave. Let’s see: A 'man of the cloth' intervening on an apparently defenseless woman’s behalf using evasion and deceit or, some might say, cleverness and presence of mind. Sounds simple and clear cut enough.  Bad guy, good girl, and a cagey monk. Citing this story as some kind of example, the authors go on to make a case for there being, as well as ‘bad lies,’ ‘good lies.’ Lies told with the best of intentions, altruistic and otherwise positive lies that do good, (not bad), are ok, as long as ‘we are thoughtful and respectful.’ The point is made: sometimes it is good to lie, and lucky is the woman who has such a clever or gullible monk on her side, regardless of her previous and unknown actions, or the wild man's specific intentions.

I have no intention of refuting such a claim. That one can have good intention to lie to another is moot, dependant on one’s judgment, and subject only, really, to one’s own scrutiny, or the one who discovers the fact of the matter. But while we are here, let's discuss the above hypothetical. Specious, to say the least, and as such, has, or could have any number of cockamamie outcomes and or morals, depending on the bent of either the narrator or anyone who dares question it’s obvious and simplistic 'good and bad' characterizations. And when it comes to such a fundamental matter as lying, lying being at least as commonplace in the modern day zeitgeist as in any other time in recorded history, if not more so; one of the great ‘truths’ or polemics of the human conditions, and one of the ‘realities’ in Plato’s Cave that casts its shadow for the captives there to dwell upon, well, who really knows, given the situation, what one would really do if one was actually to be at the right place at the right time to have to confront such a dilemma?  But again, the point is moot, and be it upon one's own soul as it were.

But it is this matter of “when it may cause yourself (sic) and others suffering or psychological damage…” where I would like to consider the ramifications of lying. That is, with regard to the actual effects lies may have upon one’s soul, or … inner most integrity, to use a less loaded term. After all, simply put, lying is just a tool. Pure and simple. Neither good nor bad. Merely a device of some characteristic that we homo sapiens have in our survivalist bag of tricks that we can utilize whenever we feel the need of something a little extra to further our own agendas. And the main, if not only characteristic of lying is the function to conceal the truth, or a truth, from another. To deceive. To obscure or otherwise, no matter the reason for telling the lie, to hide one’s intent from the comprehension or perspective of another. That is what lying is all about, regardless of extraneous motive or intention. To not tell the truth, and in effect, conceal one’s truth from another. And it is in this regard of concealment of oneself that I have concern. For what are the ramifications of concealing ourselves from one another? Especially with regard to those whom we love and with whom we share our lives?  If one considers that the eyes are the windows of the soul, windows being those devices we use to let the light in as it were, to let us see thru to the other side of their dominion, as opposed to doors and walls per se that block the light, and that in some manner or another, lies block access to the truth or light otherwise to be seen thru those windows, how or in what way do lies block those windows? And what ultimate effect, if any, do these blockages have upon our inner most integrity? One thing is clear in this matter. Whether or not one knows if another is lying to one or not, in close relationships at least, where the participants are well known to each other, it is usually always clear when a person stops being as open as they usually are. One may not know what is wrong, but one knows something is not right; something is up, not as usual, wrong. And that is where i start to wonder as to the actual effect wrought upon each of us when we lie, regardless of those extraneous motives of various intent.

Now, I had occasion to experience a platonic intimacy in full with the pre-teener of a friend of mine just a short while ago, and what an experience that was. And this happened to be, if memory serves me well, the first time I had experienced real, 100% bottom-line intimacy since I don’t know when, possibly since I was in the womb, considering the emotional unavailability of my parents and how I had been emotionally inaccessible myself since I was about nine years of age. If this is true, and I think it is, I have thusly been existentially and fundamentally alone for perhaps all of my life, and this in itself may be why this experience had such an effect upon me. Be that as it may, this experience humbled me to my core as this child opened up to me and shared an emotional bond that i have yet, outside the womb, to experience in this world. Here I was, 60 years old, and experiencing true intimacy, eye to eye and tear for tear, with a youngling who was at the time in my charge, me being the babysitter of the evening. And it was then that I realized that I was holding back the fact that although i already knew about the subject at hand, having been privy to the original situation with the mother, I was presenting as though i was hearing this story for the first time, and that that was a lie in itself, as well intentioned and benign as any, which was interfering in the moment like a sliver in one's finger during some intense and focused digital endeavour, and just as bothersome. I considered the matter but briefly and shared my proprietary information. Confidentiality forbids further disclosure, but suffice to say my honestly was met with reason and understanding, and some concern. But the integrity of the moment held. This last action in particular highlighted and cemented the peer to peer relationship we were establishing that evening as I gave up the reigns of rational, responsibility and ‘guardianship’ to my young friend to make whatever out of it he/she would with regard to the matters at hand. 
We were now equals, and we both knew it.


Did we have to pour out our whole life stories to each other, or tell each other each and every mundane and personal detail of our lives to establish and maintain this connection as long as we did?  We did not. What mattered was the ability to be able to do so should there be anything that we were holding back, and to be 100% open to each other, on any and every level. And once I disclosed the pertinent truth, I believe we were just that. 100% open to each other.Gone was the ‘adult’ and ‘child’ dynamic, the facades of convention and habit that so often get in the way of true, platonic and wholehearted intercourse, and in their place stood two human beings who had no secrets from one another, healthy and appropriate personal boundaries intact, and each of us strengthened and invigorated by the occasion. I am floored, and honoured to be given such a trust. Do i over explain or bore you with undue simplification or extraneous detail? I hope and think not, for indeed, I know or hold no other thing to be more sacred than this, such is the intrinsic value of unfettered intimacy, a living, breathing connection to the life force of another, and the telling therefore in need of clear and precise detail. And in this matter of such sacred trust I will forever remain steadfast and true. For together we stand, united, and otherwise, alone and forsaken we make our way to our solitary exits.

And this is where I take exception to this article that promotes ‘the good lie,’ and trusts to subjectivity and ‘good intentions’ to decide when a thing is ‘for someone else’s own good,’ or what have you. Myriad and varied are the justifications for lying, and the lie to oneself perhaps the easiest to justify, once that habit has taken hold.And who knows what might have been had one resorted to another recourse than the white lie, the expedient thing, the PC thing to do?  Had I not gone with "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," who knows whether or no I would now have made this life affirming connection with my young friend, and made myself and my companion available to the ineffable but oh so very real value one gets out of seeing ‘eye to eye’ with another, of sharing such a fundamental connection, a “genuine harmony between two people[i]” that supercharges one for who knows how long, the spring in one’s step renewed, one’s outlook out. I am doubtful to think it would have been so. And to think that all one has to do to recharge one’s ‘spiritual battery,’ as it were, and reciprocally, is to be with and openly, those with whom we can see eye to eye, again and again, and share the energy and life force that is the product of such fresh and wholesome intimacy. And is the antithesis of this not the real cost of lying?  

One wonders, also, in this age of disintegrating nuclear family and the seemingly ever widening gap between parents and their offspring, just how much this ‘gap’ can be attributed to the stockpile of lies, deceptions and such we perpetrate upon our children in the name of expediency, good intentions, discipline and the like.Is this all really necessary, or do we do so out of habit and or the lessons that we were taught in the past?

Lie if you will. There are a host of ‘good,’ ‘sensible,’ and ‘well intentioned’ reasons out there to justify one’s actions in this regard. And who’s to say what will become of it, lies being just ephemera and of no real consequence in the end? Woody Allen in "Crimes and Misdemeanours" poses such a dynamic. Or, are lies indeed cataracts on the windows of our soul, ever growing and obscuring our ‘sight’ as the layers of deception and insensitivity increase over time, and our ability to experience life to the fullest is obscured and dulled by these layers of deceit? Of course, it’s all a judgment call, and we ourselves the only ones to know when considering whether “speaking the truth (is) the best thing to do.” And perhaps that is the greatest price to pay in this matter of lying, to be the only one to know as we barricade ourselves behind an ever growing film of white-lies, half-truths, and equivocations eloquent, specious, well-meaning and or otherwise.

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[i] Erich Fromm,  “For Love of Life”