by Stephen Popple

Created on: October 28, 2008

A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie. ~Charles Edward Montague, Disenchantment.

The best policy is not always the most simple or the least painful but it in this case it is definitely honesty. Most of us know from first hand experience that telling lies, even little white ones, is wrong and they usually come back to haunt you when you least expect it. Even those lies that we tell when we think that we are doing it to save someones feelings can come back and bite later on. After all if you do not tell any lies you never have to remember anything later on.

I have found, from unfortunate personal experience, that even small white lies can live with you for a long time. As an example of this, let me relate a short episode from my courtship of my wife. One night, just after we had started going out, my wife asked me over to her place for dinner. I arrived and it was all very romantic with candles, soft lighting, music and wine to set the mood. My wife had spent quite some time preparing a culinary extravaganza for us and in due course we sat down to eat. The main course that she served was so loaded with garlic and butter and I am sure that the memory of that taste will, regrettably, probably remain with me forever. Needless to say that after the meal was over I could not but compliment her on her cooking skills, given all of the effort she put into the evening. About two years after that meal we got married, and about five years after that, having eaten that meal regularly for all of the intervening time, I finally had the gumption to tell her that I did not like that particular dish. One small lie during a romantic dinner caused me seven years of suffering.

Of course avoiding bad meals and other heartaches at a later date is not the only reason to tell the truth. The best and most rewarding experience is when you get the opportunity to test yourself against the harshness of everyday experience and you come out the better for it. By this I mean when the situation arrives when you are faced with the choice do I tell a lie, avoid a bad situation and then hope I can remember the details for the rest of my life so the lie is not discovered? Or, do I tell the truth, sometimes a very hard truth, and get the opportunity to use my innate intellectual ability, which we all have by the way, to tell the truth in the best possible way to avoid hurting peoples feeling or causing other problems. For me it is the later. Tell the truth, test yourself, test others. I have found that usually those people who have difficulty with the truth are those furthest removed from it and tend to avoid it for themselves and for others. And, if they can not handle the truth then perhaps they should do what my old Physical Education teacher told me and eat a spoonful of cement and harden up.

Don't believe me, try it. Use the truth. When your wife/girlfriend/significant other asks you 'does my bum look big in this?' Say, 'it sure does. But it is the best damn bum I have ever seen'. If they care more what others may think than you then they may need help, may I suggest relationship counseling.

Honesty is the best policy and if we were all completely honest with each other we could put most lawyers out of business and all get on with enjoying our lives without the worry of trying to remember the myriad details that we invent in order to smooth out the details of our everyday lives.

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