I'm twenty one, and if you asked me right this moment, I'd be hard pressed to settle on whether telling the truth or intentional
lying has made for a happier, better life. First off, this node does have some sense of
integrity for others to read it. It isn't just a long-winded excuse of one person's(me) personal choice to freely partake in the wonderful dance of bending truths and intentionally misleading
people.
A quick summary if you will. For the last ten years or so, I've been working on my ability to tell lies with a perfect demeanor. Taking up rather extreme amounts of my time, it was interesting work for me to learn that certain facial tics, body language, and tonal
cadences were always subconsciously communicated when people lie. For a good two years or so, I actually studied the higher resources available to me on lying. Among my
bedside reading were declassified handbooks on
FBI vocal techniques,
traveling show carnie memoirs,
medical studies on the neurosis of
compulsive liars, and bible-like manuals on proper
polygraph (lie-detector) administering techniques. Of course, this was all just scholarly endeavor. The real system of becoming a perfect liar is the daily, almost militant practice of lying to everyone.
The reason most people are terrible liars is because of the target group of society they began lying to at a young age. Almost everyone's first attempts at deceit were aimed at
teachers,
priests, and
parents. Dang, that's like picking up a baseball for the first time and getting your dad to drive you down to
Yankee stadium so you can tryout as their starting pitcher. You got to take it slow with becoming a good liar. Build up a strong ability to lie to unimportant people in your life, like grocery clerks, the mailman, and
blockbuster video rental boys. It's important that the first lies you ever tell are white lies. Harmless little bends of the truth that do little harm to anyone. This may include telling your school chums a pre-fabricated story of how you went dog-shopping last weekend when you were really reading books on better lying. Or showing vocal interest to a sales rep at a car dealership when there's no way in fuck you're going to buy a car that day. Your body will start to acclimate into a better posture with deceit because of the incredible lack of trouble you'd get into if you WERE caught lying to these people.
As I became more at ease with the lies I told to the hum-drum clerks and workers associated with my daily routine, it only became so much more easier to lie when it counted. These would include deceitful practice with
high school teachers, university
professors, and untrusting fathers of my old
girlfriends. From a good base of deceit I had gained from being able to flawlessly execute white lies, I could effortlessly throw out the IMPORTANT ones when they counted.
Lying isn't just saying an untruth without sweating or suddenly jerking your head around or coughing or blinking a certain way after the lie is delivered. Physical behavior is important, but not the whole ball of wax. There are certain subtleties of choosing the actual words you say, the timing of how you space out your breaths (cadence), and a pre-formed strategy as to the later route your conversation will take after you lie. Understand that this isn't just an isolated statement that isn't true. You have to account for what has already been said before you lied and the supporting thoughts you have to stream out after the lie is told. It's pretty hard and takes practice (I stress that you practice with the unimportant 'retail' and 'hot dog vendor' people of your life, not like, your parents or your wife). You can get burned if you're caught outright(I attribute this to a lazy effort in the pre-work and post-work of a lie) OR if you just have bad execution(you visually 'act' like a liar). And man, then it's all over. People deemed untrustworthy, be it by actual evidence or just a lingering doubt by their mannerisms when they talk, have to try hard to develop
credibility again. Sometimes it's not even possible. Not everyone gives a liar a second chance.
Another way lying gets such a bad rep is the general type of people who practice in it the most. Violent
criminals, abusive
husbands, manipulative
girlfriends, or
sales reps pursuing the all mighty buck. Their lies are different from my lies. At the end of the day, no one is dead, poorer, abused, or sadder from the things I said to them. They are misinformed, sure. I mean, that's the intended perfect outcome of telling a lie. But misinformation happens at all levels of society and communication. Some dimwits in powerful positions even take misinformation and turn them into laws for people to be governed by.
But it's very difficult to describe how lying can make your life better without sincerely hurting anyone in the long run. I easily concede the fact that I just don't have the grammar or delivery to better relate this to you. And there is a certain pre-requisite you need to have when you attempt to lie without hurting ( urm, you kind of have to be a nice person who cares about other people, or something) Certain daily situations just lend themselves to lying instead of truth-telling. Lying to others keeps me truthful to myself and who I am. And isn't that what we're all about at the end of the day. Let me explain. I'm a bit of a recluse, and generally, people piss me off. Either by their horrible disrespect for their common man, or the hypocrisy they choose to live their lives, or the poor decisions they so calmly make that influence a bad time for other people, whatever. In some personal way I feel abused or somehow tainted by being up front and truthful with these certain types of people. They don't deserve to see the real me. On the highway of life, lying allows me to basically drive quickly and smoothly around the gaping pot holes of hurt they can cause if you get caught moving over one. These people who step on the backs of others for their own gain. I'll easily say that some people deserve to be lied too. I grammatically group them as '
bastards'.
There are people I never lie to, though. I'm old enough to not get myself into adolescent grief with my parents or friends. It's nice to have family and close friends that you deem worthy enough to see and hear the real you. I only know three close
friends who I don't ever lie to, as they love me enough and care for me in such real ways that I either don't need to lie to them or they've earned the right to not be lied to (as they've never lied to hurt me, yadda yadda). But the world is a big place. And sometimes it can get real ugly real fast by the bastards that seem to thrive in society. Personally, life was only so much more horrible and meaningless when I tried to relate to these people with the whole me.
Fuck it all, some people don't deserve to see the real me, and that's fine. Lying keeps me protected from the
abuse and
hurt they could cause if they had access to my inner world. Intentional acts of mistruth are the locks to my inner gates. I stress that lying should not be
compulsive. Don't lie to just lie. That leads to such bad
karma, I can't even begin. Lying, controlled and done with good or
self-survival intentions, is practical. Quite useful, actually.
On a lighter note, lying also saved my
ass from getting kicked. Fathers who may read this and know who I am in
meatspace, listen. I lied to you because you couldn't understand how your daughter and I shared such an intimate bond. And when you asked me that question about your
daughter, me, and
prom night I knew you couldn't understand. Such a strong bond. Strong enough to practice
pre-marital,
sexual relations (here I go again)...