On lying

How many times have we repeated something like the following quarrel?

Hosea: Hi there!

Wife: Hi.

Hosea: Say, did you ever get those mangoes put away, or do I need to do it?

Wife: No, I didn’t get them put away because I had a herd of elephants come crashing through here recently and I just spent the last hour cleaning up elephant dung.

Hosea: Oh don’t say that! You spent the last hour playing video games; don’t pretend it was elephants.

Wife: What makes you think I was playing video games?

Hosea: Well I was standing over here doing the dishes, and I can see straight through this window to the room where you were sitting.

Wife: That does it! I am sick of being spied on! First thing tomorrow I’m going to wall up that window!

So at a guess, how many times have we had that quarrel? I’d have to say easily hundreds. In fact, if we argued that way an average of only once a week for the last 25 years (and sometimes I think that is a conservative estimate), we’d still be looking at some 1300 repetitions. So whatever the number really is, it’s a big one.

The more interesting question, however, is this: What is the topic of the discussion? What is the core issue that we are actually arguing about? This question is interesting, because we don’t agree. That is, not only do we not agree on the positions we take, but we don’t even agree on what we are quarreling over.

For Wife, the real issues – the fundamental issues – all have to do with freedom and control, or (to put the same thing another way) with privacy (secrecy) and exposure. For Wife, the root cause of this quarrel is that I am trying to control her, to coerce her into putting away mangoes, to prevent her from having any free time when she can do something she enjoys. For Wife, the pivotal sentence is "You spent the last hour playing video games," in which I bring an accusation and then convict her, acting as prosecuting attorney and jury and judge all at once. And for Wife, her plan to wall up the window is a blow struck for self-determination, for freedom, maybe even for survival. She might be able to imagine a way that it could hurt me, but only because I am trying to demand things that I have no right to demand. If I get hurt by her legitimate exercise of freedom and self-defense, well sic semper tyrannis!

What is remarkable is that my perception of the exact same quarrel is so different that we do not agree on a single point of the description. Not one. For me, the real issue has to do with truth and falsehood, the pivotal sentence is "Oh don’t say that!" and the only person Wife hurts by walling up the window is herself.

How is it possible that two people who are both supposed to be so good with words nonetheless fail so utterly even to agree on what they are talking about?

Actually, I don’t really know how we get so confused. I have a couple theories, but they are no more than that. It might help, however, if I start out by explaining how I can believe my version of what this argument is about. I choose to explain mine and not Wife’s for two reasons: first, it is mine, so naturally I am partial to it; and second, I think it is not as obvious as hers. In fact, at the moment I expect that most people are on Wife’s side and think I am being a jerk. I hope to explain how I see it differently.

The first point is that I really don’t think I am all that important; I surely do not expect other people to take my desires all that seriously. Do I ask Wife to do things for me? Sure, all the time – in exactly the same way that I assume she will ask me to pick up a quart of milk on my way home from work. We have joint responsibility for running a household, so I figure that we share the chores. I don’t feel shy about asking for her help, but if she’s not able to do this or that it usually doesn’t matter much. If I forget to pick up a quart of milk on the way home from work, the worst it costs us is a little inconvenience, not major tragedy. It is exactly the same if she doesn’t iron my shirts before a business trip or pay the library fine. All this stuff needs to be done, but lives don’t hang in the balance on any of it and in the worst case we’ll just have to get the job handled another way. Big deal.

As a result, I don’t think Wife is buying anything significant by lying to me about what she has done. If it wasn’t that important which of us put away the mangoes, it really doesn’t matter much that she was playing video games while I washed the dishes; all it means is that now I should go put away the mangoes before they get soft. So where is the benefit, the payoff, in lying? If I were the kind of man who was going to shoot her for playing video games, then I could see a real payoff. If we lived in Nazi Germany and the Gestapo came to the door looking for Jews and Gypsies and homosexuals, naturally it would behoove us to say that there were none in our house even if every single one of us was actually Jewish or Gypsy or homosexual – or even all three at once. But Wife has never claimed that I am going to kill her if I get an answer I don’t like – no matter what the question. The most she has ever claimed is that I yell if she doesn’t do what I want, but even this is patently false. I admit it is true that I yelled a lot over inconsequential trivia back when I was a callow, immature kid … say, in my twenties. But that was a long, long time ago, and I don’t yell over those things now. I also really hope that we aren’t all held permanently to account for the things we did when we were callow, immature kids, or else we are all doomed.

Well, if lying doesn’t buy Wife anything significant, does it cost her much? Or is it just a kind of freebie? Here we get closer to the core of the issue. I believe that lying costs Wife a very great deal.

Go back to my example of the Gestapo for a minute, and ask yourself why do people lie? For most of us, it boils down to one of two reasons: we are afraid of what the other person will do if we tell the truth, or we want to get something from him. But just wanting something isn’t enough – lots of people want things and work honestly for them instead of lying to sneak them deceptively. For most of us, we have to believe that we can’t get what we want any other way, before we try to get it through lying. In other words, for the vast majority of us, lying is caused by fear or weakness. Or both, of course.

This connection isn’t something we always think about consciously, but our souls – our minds, our spirits, our psyches – know it implicitly. Whenever we lie, our souls see us do it and conclude that in that particular moment we must be weak or afraid: else why would we be lying? And our souls learn by repetition. So anybody who lies chronically is chronically telling his soul "I am weak and fearful. I am weak and fearful. I am weak and fearful. I am weak and fearful…." And after enough cycles of this, the soul starts to believe it.

This, I think, is the profoundest cost of lying: every single lie chips away a little bit from one’s self-esteem, one’s self-respect, one’s basic courage. Lie too often, or too frequently, and your soul becomes a Swiss cheese, with no light or life or love left anywhere inside it. And when that happens, you die. Oh, your body may still walk around and talk to people for another fifty years; your body may still hold a job, volunteer at charities, pay taxes, drink too much, or have sex. But you yourself – your true self, your inner self, your heart of hearts – you will have died. And where your soul used to live, nothing will be left but an icy darkness of shrieking fear and clawing incapacity. This is a hell of a way to finish out the rest of your days.

So much for what lying costs. Now what exactly is it that I want?

Wife will tell you that I want to have my own way; and that I want her (in particular) to make it happen. And I suppose at the most superficial level, it would be hard to argue with that. After all, doesn’t everybody want to have his own way? And what would make me different from everybody else?

So sure, at the most superficial level of course I want to have my own way. But at a deeper level, the answer changes. Remember that I don’t think I myself am all that important in the grand scheme of things. My impact on the world is negligible, my achievements and distinctions are inconsequential, and any self-love I feel is a suitable target for humor. Therefore, I don’t expect anybody else to take me all that seriously; and in particular – at a deep level, now – I don’t expect Wife to do so. Nor do I think it would be healthy for her to obsess too much about me. Her proper task is the care of her own soul’s health, not mine. To the extent that she looks after her own soul responsibly, she is working towards her own long term well-being. To the extent that she is doing anything that injures or damages her soul, she is slowly killing herself. Because I love Wife, I want her to live well and be happy. This requires that she work hard to build up the health and well-being of her soul, not tear them down. Because I love her, I want to see her tend to the health of her soul and avoid unhealthy habits in the same way that I don’t want to see her addicted to smoking.

And lying will rot away her soul as surely as cigarettes will rot away her lungs. Therefore I don’t want her to lie. I really do mean it when I write that the pivotal sentence in my little dialogue above is "Oh don’t say that!"

Notice that the main motive here has nothing to do with my own convenience, nor with catching her doing something discreditable so I can chant "Neener neener neener!" Naturally at the most superficial level, I would be glad of anything to make my life more convenient. (I hope, however, that I have outgrown the desire to chant "Neener neener neener!") But it doesn’t necessarily help me for Wife to tell the truth. She might tell me truthfully that she didn’t iron my shirts because she didn’t feel like it, and if I mind then I can fuck myself. And how exactly does this make my life any more convenient? Plainly it doesn’t.

The person who benefits is Wife herself. When she tells the truth to and about herself, even about discreditable things, then she can at least face the world whole. Every time she tells the truth about something that scares or embarrasses her, she will feel a little less fear the next time. A regimen of unpleasant truths about herself can build up her soul when it was withering away from too many flattering lies. (I hope it is clear in all this that when I talk about the truth, I mean the truth about oneself. Insisting on telling the unvarnished truth about other people can be a form of hostility or aggression, which is far removed from the kind of health I am advocating here.)

So let’s go back to walling up the window -- who suffers from that? Well, it might inconvenience me; but in the long run the one who suffers is Wife herself. How does she suffer? That’s easy: by blocking the window and preventing me from knowing the truth about how she spends her time, Wife makes it possible for her to continue to get away with things. And as long as she can get away with things, she’ll do it because it looks easier than turning around and standing firm. But that means she will continue to remain a prisoner of her mendacious lifestyle – her disease of the soul that eats away at her basic courage and forces her to lie more and more often about more and more trivial things. And in the long run, like cigarettes, that will kill her. Leaving the window where it is looks more painful and embarrassing in the short run, but it forces her to stop hiding. And she will never recover until she stops fleeing for cover.

Total transparency and total honesty about herself are the first steps towards peace and courage and health. And that is why I have always thought they are so essentail for her, and why I have always urged her to be totally honest about herself inside that small circle where it is safe.

She may disagree whether it is safe for her to be honest with me, but that is a topic for another day. If she would even start by being honest with herself, that would be a great big improvement over where she is right now.