by Nicole Callis

Created on: October 01, 2008

A couple years ago, I found out my boyfriend at the time, cheated on me. This was discovered by being nosey when I shouldn't have been. I read through some messages that explained his mysterious tardiness of getting home from work. When confronted about a reason as to why he was late, he said he was at Walmart. Fair enough, it turned out being tue on some level. After seeing the messages, that what he was really up to involved him and another girl, sitting outside in his car, in Walmart's parking lot, I found myself waking him up in his sleep accusing him of being a liar. Why? Because I felt he lied to me about what he was doing, that he wasn't truthful about it. Long story short, our fight ended with him having the last word, which I hate not having. His point went along the lines that, he couldn't have lied when I never asked if he was at Walmart alone. If I had asked him specifically whether or not he was there with someone and not just ask where he was, his answer would have been more informative to suit the requirements of the question being asked.

Of course that was not accepted as an excuse, and things ended very shortly after that night.But, now, a couple years later, I can see the validity in what he said.How can someone really lie or be dishonest about something that was never more than an expectation for them to disclose. Being that we are human, our primitive instincts kick in at this point.Why willingly confess to something we aren't being pressured to divulge?If we withold information, we aren't necessarily lying about it if it was never specifically questioned. It all comes down to morals, that the person being questioned will be honest, will tell us what we want to know, even if we don't directly ask them, we just assume they have the common sense to know what we mean.

In this respect, truth is conditional.There is no constant or absolute quality to it by any means.There is no way for truth to be confined into a simple grid of whether something or someone is truthful or not.Life is not that simple and truth isn't either.

The seemingly general belief appears to be that truth is based off of whether what is said or done matches up perfectly with what was actually said or done.We can't do this, there are too many variables that come into the equation.What one person says happened or said they did, is just that, their opinion on the situation or events that are being referenced.If another person wants to know what happened, assuming they weren't there themselves to witness it firsthand, then they are asking someone else merely for their opinion.Which, in the end, the person's opinion may not be linked to the reality of the situation.Therefore, there is no real correct way to determine if what was told in response is accurate or "truthful."

Truth is simply something manifested by each person.I believe, not disclosing all the pertinent facts to something, whether they were specified or not as being a point of interest, is not being truthful.I see that as knowingly holdingback information you know will inevitably be relevant to the situation at hand, which in turn means, you chose to lie and willingly chose to keep the full truth of the matter a secret. Others will be like my ex. They will believe it isn't possible for them to bee dubbed a liar if all they do was answer the questions being asked of them. They will see it as, they told the truth about what was expected of them to disclose, no point in volunteering extra information, if it wasn't required. Either way, both sides are accurate.

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