The Truth about Lying

Everybody lies, given a certain situation or emotional condition. Everyone faces that moment where the decision needs to be made: to lie or come clean. Whether it is out of full awareness, or a subconscious reaction, seemingly harmless or unintentional; lying happens, despite our greatest attempts to avoid it.

There are 3 main reasons attributed to lying, such as to protect self image and save face, to harm others, and the most common one – fear.

Yes, fear – it’s paralyzing, crippling, makes your head fuzzy, increases your heartbeat, robs you of peace, betrays trust, harms relationships…and yet you do it.

But why? Why do you lose control? Why can’t you just say no to lying, straight to the face? Why do allow fear to paralyze you?

Maybe it’s because you foolishly view yourself as powerless little thing, that has no other choice. Maybe you feel it’s for the best, to protect those around, and suffer the consequences alone. Maybe you are just not audacious enough to stand up and speak the truth, and set yourself free - because just as there are prices to pay for lying, there are consequences to the truth.

Lying is a psychological adaptation. According to human reasoning, deception is inherent in human kind, as a way to resolve life’s persistent problems. In fact, most of the lies people tell are unintentional. When the truth seems so difficult to share, lying looks like the easiest, immediate way out – but in fact, it really isn’t.

While it is true, some people lie intentionally to mislead others, to harm them, or get something they want, the majority of us lie as and when the situation ‘requires.’ Most people lie to protect themselves, and those involved.

Think about it – when fear grips your heart, you want to tell the truth but you are afraid of the consequences, that psychological adaptation just ‘helps’ you get out of that sticky situation for the moment. Yes, it causes you terrible stress – you can’t eat, you can’t sleep, you can’t get it out of your mind – the fear binds itself like weighty chain around your neck and feet as you tread the soaking sands of the sea.

You somehow know you can’t go on like that forever. You have to let it out soon, and you really know you want to and will do it. But when? That’s exactly when you allow yourself to lie – to buy time till you dare to tell the truth. But often times, the truth is discovered even before you can gather enough guts for honesty. In fact, you know this will happen. But when your fear gets a hold on you, you are no more than a puppet playing to its whims.

Talk about honesty – assuming you are bold enough to speak the truth forthright, are you ready to face the consequences? What if there are threats? What if someone involved cannot accept it? Will your truth lead to harm for others? Are you willing to face the music or wish for an easy way out to end all of your problems – wishing you weren’t alive? Do you have enough faith and strength to stand firm regardless of what happens after you speak the truth? When people are not sure, that’s when they lie.

People ask for the truth, but when you tell them, they may not be prepared to accept it. Sometimes, the truth may hurt really bad. When they know it, can they really go on being how they were before? Won’t the new piece of revelation play in their mind over and over again – causing anger, disappointment, pain, hopelessness, distrust?

It is said the truth sets you free. True, it sets the liar free once and for all, without having to look for a curtain to hide every time the light shines. But there will come days when you wished you never knew, when you wonder if you would have been happier not knowing in the first place. Times when you understand it was not easy for someone to conceal the truth from you, moments when you realize accepting the truth is as grueling as having enough guts to say it out loud. And that requires a lot of time and healing for all involved.

Lying is wrong. There’s no excuse to it. There are things in life we wish never happened; things we hope didn’t have to be that way. But the truth is, honesty takes a lot more courage than most of us have in our hearts – be it to speak out, or to accept.

There will always be a Goliath standing in the way, one that will make you choose whether to lie or tell the truth – and that giant is very real. Only the love of God can cast out fear, to fear the Lord only, much more than mere mortals, greater than the physical consequences.

Only the love and strength of God can give you the wisdom, and the stone that’s just the right size to hit that giant to the ground - no matter what a pygmy you are in the light of the whole situation. And until the heart is fully immersed with that Love to embrace wholeness, there is much work to be done in your life…and that is the truth.

May the good Lord forgive us for all our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us.

The Things We Take For Granted

A 20 year old boy gets hit by a lorry on his way from college, and never makes it home to meet his mother. A once strong and sturdy man lays motionless with his eyes rolled inwards, losing the physical battle to cancer. A woman who was once the life of the party cries herself to sleep, unable to even turn her body over or dress herself, due to stroke.

It is overwhelming, when you can only watch but not do a thing to alleviate the agony of the people you were so used to seeing smiling. To just look with teary eyes, and feel the suffering with your heart - makes you wonder if you would be able to bear the pain, were it you in their place. It leaves you speechless, knowing words could never fully comfort such misery.

A lot of times, we hear people say, “There’s too much work to do… can’t finish! Die, man! Or in moments of anger, “Go and die! I wish you were dead!” Sometimes, out of rejection and hopelessness, people say, “I’d rather kill myself…” Of course, these words are uttered without much thought and out of the physical context.

But when you actually watch a person dying and you run away because you can’t bear to see it anymore; or see the torment diseases inflict on fragile bodies, to the extent that they truly wish they weren’t alive - it adds gravity to the word ‘die.’ You see life from a different perspective.

Yes, we know that people are dying everyday. We are aware of accidents and illnesses; we understand the brevity of life. Yet, we tend to enclose ourselves in our own world while we are actually pretty fine, magnify our tiny problems, do whatever we want while we are self sufficient, or let god-given energy go to waste due to meaninglessness - forgetting the things that really matter.

Observing the frailty of the human form, I count my blessings and name them one by one. The things we often take for granted:

1. Sanity – simply being able to think, and not roam the streets in rags
2. Consciousness – being able to wake up every morning, knowing there are problems, looking for solutions - it’s another new day!
3. Mobility – getting out of bed each morning to brush my teeth, pat some powder on my cheeks, put on my own clothes and drive myself to work.
4. Sight – looking at the blue sky and greenery of the golf course on my way to the office, even staring at my computer screen right now!
5. Taste – bitter, sweet or sour, however delicious or miserable the food – I can taste, chew and swallow! I can enjoy eating!
6. Smell – the scent of my favorite peppermint tea, and the fragrant perfume I dab on my neck and wrists!
7. Touch – to touch the forehead of someone dear and feel if there’s a fever, to hold the hands of those you care about…it’s a blessing!
8. Colleagues, staff & acquaintances – whether I see them every day, or only once; many that I may never get to know personally, yet smile at each morning while we ‘punch card’; or people I meet in an unexpected function - they matter!
9. Family - the quarrels, disappointments, the picking ons, the fun and the unbreakable love – in the end, whatever happens, we’re all we have!
10. Close friends – the ones who irritate, argue and accompany, make me laugh and smile, scold me when I’m wrong and catch me when I fall – love them forever!

As I think of those who are no longer with us, or others that wish time would pass sooner, I remember that we can never know whether we’ll grow up to be a hundred, and live to love it.

So, I come on bended knees to tell God, “I’m sorry, I haven’t thanked You enough…I have not been truly grateful…For You, I have not done enough…Please give me the chance…”

I Have Always Known

Do you sometimes wonder where the future is heading? Do you stop to dream, only to let those visions drip away like an ice-cream left to melt in your hands?

These are some questions that come to my mind every now and then; when I face disappointing situations; when I brush shoulders with chances; when I aspire for greater things.

Many times, I wonder why it is so easy to get depressed. Why do negative thoughts come like a little leech that quietly seeps into our socks, sticks onto our skin and drains out all the blood it can? Why does happiness seem so hard to reach?

There are many known causes of unhappiness: fixation on negative thoughts, jealousy, low self esteem, hopelessness, attempting to obtain impossible perfection, trying to reason anything and everything, feeling that the whole world is against you, and the list goes on.

Delving deeper into the heart, I summed up unhappiness to 3 things: fear of uncertainty, fear of failure and excessive reasoning.

Fear of uncertainty: sometimes life is like a roller coaster ride. Things soar into the skies, and before you know it, you’re back on ground zero. You just can’t see what’s coming. So, why fear what you don’t know? Just take them as they come.

Fear of failure: wondering if you’ll make it; whether your ideas will work out or if you’re making a stupid mistake. You’ve been through it before and you hope it’s not another slip-up. But, so what if things don’t work out? Just try again!

Excessive reasoning: Trying to explain everything around. Questioning the past, the present, the future – answers that never were, and probably never will be. Sometimes you sabotage my own happiness by thinking too much. Just need to ask God the grace to "accept the things you cannot change, change the things you can and wisdom to know the difference" – the serenity prayer.

And as I contemplate all these, immediately the sweet smile and adorable face of Amelia Earheart in “Night at the Museum 2” comes to mind. She played the role of one who lived each moment to the fullest. She loved adventure. She didn’t crack her head for reasons, or what if she’ll get lost over the Pacific Ocean. She simply did things for the fun of it!!

Being a wax figurine that would freeze at the break of dawn, the lead character Larry Daley really didn’t know how to tell the lovable woman about the brevity of her life – that the thrill would end in just fleeting hours!

What truly touched my heart was her reflective kiss as she hushed him; as she held back her tears and bid him goodbye -”I know…” She said, “I have always known…”