Are You Telling the Truth?

 

One of the things that have always been distrubing to me is when people lie to me or tell me half truths. Recently, I came across an article about this very subject that peeked my interest. A professor at the University of Mass, Social and Behavioral Sciences has some interesting things to say about this. By age 3 most children understand that lying is a way to stay out of trouble. When adults were polled, it turns out that we don' think twice about lying or miss-representing ourselves or a situation. These lies range from saying things we don't mean, to embellishing our selves or something, or just not telling the whole truth. Some of these are intended to make ourselves feel better, to save face or to make someone else feel better saving them from perceived hurt. Who are we that we think the very person whose feelings we are sparing are actually more hurt by the lie or half truth?

 

A more troubling finding in the study was that even though these lies were small the people felt justified in doing so. When presented with a video of themselves in a 10 minute conversation, they were surprised by how often they did not tell the truth even in that short conversation. What seems to be most difficult is the idea of lying is most often coming from this unconscious place in ourselves where we do not even realize how often and to what extend we do it. When the lie is rationalized to be justified, we have begun to believe that it is in our right to do it which could continue the pattern or lead to bigger breaches of our own integrity. More alarming still, the study showed that people who cheated on a test to get a high score were rewarded with a certificate of excellence;leading to more research that showed whenever we get acknowledgement in any form for the lie it gives us a sense of what we did was right. This helps to continue doing it and  rationalizing it even further to be ok to do.

 

When I brought this up to a few friends they talked about how this felt true to them and how we as a society encourage this. What was also evident was how at a intuitive level people know when someone is not being honest in their interactions with them and how bad that feels. The conversation we had encouraged each of us to look at the damaging effects of this kind of behavior and ask ourselves for what purpose would I/we engage this? And after being totally honest, make a conscious decision that our words and actions are in integrity for the benevolence of our souls and in honor of each person that we interact with.

May your day be blessed with all things good as we all look for ways to be integrity with ourselves and others.

Sandy