The Legend About Lies and Truth
Our view on lies and truth is really vague. As a general rule, we all prefer the truth. However, when what we receive or share is painful or complicated, it causes great psychological conflict.
Lying, as a general rule, is a symptom of one’s distrust or inability to deal with problems. On the other hand, lying is behaving like a vicious person who wants to take advantage of the situation.
Society still doesn’t know how to deal with the truth, even though truth and honesty are considered highly important.
The legend about lies and truth
There are legends that depict the psychological reality of our lives. Here’s one of them:
Legend has it that one day Lie and Truth bumped into each other.
“Good day,” said Lie.
“Good morning,” replied Truth.
“It’s a beautiful day,” said Lie.
Truth looked at the sky to see if it was true. It was.
“Yes, it’s a beautiful day,” said Truth.
“The lake is even more beautiful and warm,” said Lie.
Truth then looked towards the lake and saw that Lie was telling the truth and nodded. He took Lie to the water and said: “The water does look amazing. Let’s swim.”
Truth touched the water with his fingers and saw that it really was warm. This made him trust Lie. They both took off their clothes and swam quietly. After a while, Lie got out of the water, put on Truth’s clothes, and left.
Truth, unable to wear Lie’s clothes, walked along the lake without any clothes on and everyone was horrified. This is an example of how nowadays people prefer to accept lies disguised as truth than to accept the naked truth.
The vagueness between lies and truth
We relate good values with sincerity. Relationships built on foundations of lies are like fragile and weak houses of cards, capable of destroying everything in its collapse. However, despite being aware of the relationship between the truth and its complex rise, we constantly tell “half-truths” or disguise realities.
A University of Massachusetts study showed that, on average, a lie is told every 3 minutes. Other studies show that lies comprise 35% of our conversations in a week.
These statistics are discouraging. We often say that we’re honest people who never lie, but that’s also a lie in and of itself.
We don’t simply lie, we lie a lot. We lie about important things and insignificant things. It’s easier to do it than to explain and to deal with the rawness of the naked truth. People don’t reflect on the truth and instead lie very well. As a consequence, we tell small and big lies and get entangled in a web that’s difficult to break free from.
But why do we do this? The answer lies in the fact that the psychosocial benefit of lying is greater. We also do this because the truth is risky. Many times, we’re tempted to tell lies to protect our integrity or the integrity of other people and/or to take advantage of situations.
However, we mustn’t forget that it doesn’t matter how pious a lie may be because it still hinders trust. Lying makes us doubt even the most straightforward things.