The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...
Watching an old Bewitched show in which Endora, meddling mother-in-law, casts a spell to make all the humans say exactly what is on their mind at all times. Complete honesty, no ability to tell little white lies. This of course leads to the classic sitcom hilarity where everyone starts saying socially inappropriate things, and hillarity ensues until the wrap up at the end where everyone seems better off for having aired so many grievances that were hidden behind their daily polite masks.
When I was younger, I had no social filter. Up until my late twenties or older I would say, I had no concept of the polite social lie. Everything I thought came out of my mouth, and I still have a lot of times where I will just blurt whatever I am thinking without processing it through the artificial social grace filter that I've had to install in my mind to get along well in life. It is consequently always an afterthought that someone may be lying to me - I have had a lot of trouble in life being too trusting, a naivety born of believing that people are saying exactly what they mean and have no ulterior or hidden motivations.
Part of this I think also ties in to mind-blindness. As a child in particular, it was often difficult for me to imagine what other people were feeling and thinking. If i feel a certain way about a certain thing, surely everyone else must too. This didn't mean I had no empathy - I didn't want to actively hurt anyone, and I certainly felt bad for anyone that was hurting. But I was often mystified by the hows and whys of the situation.
I discovered LYING (all caps) when the whole santa claus incident occurred about age six. I figured out he wasn't real, and my parents essentially admitted he was just a story, that they had presented at truth. Ah hah, so this was a lie. When I went to tell my friends about it, I was practically crucified. No santa! Blasphemy! Surely our parents wouldn't lie to us...
Well yeah. They did. And then there was my mother saying she was thirty, though I had brothers in their twenties.... one of my friends did the math but surely my mother wouldn't lie to me, right? Once I got that squared away, it occurred to me that I should try this lying business. I had no idea of scope, though. I decided to go big. I invented whole days off of school for various reasons, said I needed supplies for projects I didn't really have, told my folks I didn't have any homework when I really did... and they bought it. I got to stay home, get new crayons, avoid homework. It was pretty distressing, really. Was there no limit to what I could lie about?
As a teenager, I did public speaking and participated in plays in school. I learned diction, and emotion, and inflection in ways I hadn't been aware of. I lost my south Jersey accent (moon is not pronounced meuwn, and water is not worter) and was able to affect various other accents. I had too much fun with this- when I took jobs and classes in my teen years, I would often affect one accent or another and a whole back story to go with the character I created. The more unbelievable the better, because it presented a challenge and because really I wanted someone to say "Oh hey, that's a lie" and for us to have a good laugh about it. But we never did. Two things occurred - either the story was believed, and went on until I got bored with it. Or alternately, people didn't believe it but were too polite to say anything - or perhaps had just a bit of doubt that well, maybe.
About this time I discovered lies weren't good for me as a person, because they fed into the paranoia of what I later would find out was PTSD. Hypervigilance. When you tell a story that involves people chasing you, say, you start to notice people who are too close to you. And does that mean maybe they really are?
I can't remember the exact moment I learned about degrees of lying, and that while it was unacceptable to tell a huge story as truth, I was paradoxically expected to tell small lies constantly and daily in order to keep people happy and keep things running smoothly. But I tried them out, and soon got good enough at them. I learned that when someone asks "What do you think of this?" the polite answer is not what you think of it, but what the other person expects of you to think. I learned that "How are you?" is not an actual question, but rather a cue that must be responded to with "Fine, thanks, and you?"
Needless to say, I did not enjoy this. I felt stifled and stiff and disingenuous. I felt like the truth was sitting there on the tip of my tongue and I had to choke it back in order to make people happy. I didn't like feeling that way. To further complicate things, I also learned that there are degrees of truth that you can tell to various people. You can be honest with your husband, but must be socially polite with your neighbor. You must be socially polite and deferential to a boss. You may lie whimsically to a child, but not to an adult. There are so many varied degrees of acceptable honesty and dishonesty that it makes my head spin.
For the most part, I have become tired of trying to lie. I am a WYSIWYG engine. What you see is what you get. I don't have layers like an onion, all my parts are incredibly close to the surface which leads to hurt a lot of times - but it also lets me experience the world closely. I perhaps find more joy in many things than people who keep parts of themselves closed off and reserved, and that is some compensation for how easily I can be hurt.
I can remember to answer "How are you?" with "Fine, thanks, and you?" sometimes, but I prefer to say something true. "My back is hurting a little today, but I'm still pretty happy. How are you feeling?" or "I didn't sleep well, don't you hate when that happens?" And I always remember to ask - with genuine interest - how my friends are feeling, what they are doing, and what matters to them. I hope that by doing so, I am inviting them to be honest with me and move beyond that social lie of "Fine, thanks."
Would it be a better world if we had our own Endora to cast a spell of honesty over us all? Would it all wrap up okay in the end, once grievences were aired and true feelings were discussed, beyond the stifled polite conversations and masks? I'm not sure, but I"d certainly like to think so.
When I was younger, I had no social filter. Up until my late twenties or older I would say, I had no concept of the polite social lie. Everything I thought came out of my mouth, and I still have a lot of times where I will just blurt whatever I am thinking without processing it through the artificial social grace filter that I've had to install in my mind to get along well in life. It is consequently always an afterthought that someone may be lying to me - I have had a lot of trouble in life being too trusting, a naivety born of believing that people are saying exactly what they mean and have no ulterior or hidden motivations.
Part of this I think also ties in to mind-blindness. As a child in particular, it was often difficult for me to imagine what other people were feeling and thinking. If i feel a certain way about a certain thing, surely everyone else must too. This didn't mean I had no empathy - I didn't want to actively hurt anyone, and I certainly felt bad for anyone that was hurting. But I was often mystified by the hows and whys of the situation.
I discovered LYING (all caps) when the whole santa claus incident occurred about age six. I figured out he wasn't real, and my parents essentially admitted he was just a story, that they had presented at truth. Ah hah, so this was a lie. When I went to tell my friends about it, I was practically crucified. No santa! Blasphemy! Surely our parents wouldn't lie to us...
Well yeah. They did. And then there was my mother saying she was thirty, though I had brothers in their twenties.... one of my friends did the math but surely my mother wouldn't lie to me, right? Once I got that squared away, it occurred to me that I should try this lying business. I had no idea of scope, though. I decided to go big. I invented whole days off of school for various reasons, said I needed supplies for projects I didn't really have, told my folks I didn't have any homework when I really did... and they bought it. I got to stay home, get new crayons, avoid homework. It was pretty distressing, really. Was there no limit to what I could lie about?
As a teenager, I did public speaking and participated in plays in school. I learned diction, and emotion, and inflection in ways I hadn't been aware of. I lost my south Jersey accent (moon is not pronounced meuwn, and water is not worter) and was able to affect various other accents. I had too much fun with this- when I took jobs and classes in my teen years, I would often affect one accent or another and a whole back story to go with the character I created. The more unbelievable the better, because it presented a challenge and because really I wanted someone to say "Oh hey, that's a lie" and for us to have a good laugh about it. But we never did. Two things occurred - either the story was believed, and went on until I got bored with it. Or alternately, people didn't believe it but were too polite to say anything - or perhaps had just a bit of doubt that well, maybe.
About this time I discovered lies weren't good for me as a person, because they fed into the paranoia of what I later would find out was PTSD. Hypervigilance. When you tell a story that involves people chasing you, say, you start to notice people who are too close to you. And does that mean maybe they really are?
I can't remember the exact moment I learned about degrees of lying, and that while it was unacceptable to tell a huge story as truth, I was paradoxically expected to tell small lies constantly and daily in order to keep people happy and keep things running smoothly. But I tried them out, and soon got good enough at them. I learned that when someone asks "What do you think of this?" the polite answer is not what you think of it, but what the other person expects of you to think. I learned that "How are you?" is not an actual question, but rather a cue that must be responded to with "Fine, thanks, and you?"
Needless to say, I did not enjoy this. I felt stifled and stiff and disingenuous. I felt like the truth was sitting there on the tip of my tongue and I had to choke it back in order to make people happy. I didn't like feeling that way. To further complicate things, I also learned that there are degrees of truth that you can tell to various people. You can be honest with your husband, but must be socially polite with your neighbor. You must be socially polite and deferential to a boss. You may lie whimsically to a child, but not to an adult. There are so many varied degrees of acceptable honesty and dishonesty that it makes my head spin.
For the most part, I have become tired of trying to lie. I am a WYSIWYG engine. What you see is what you get. I don't have layers like an onion, all my parts are incredibly close to the surface which leads to hurt a lot of times - but it also lets me experience the world closely. I perhaps find more joy in many things than people who keep parts of themselves closed off and reserved, and that is some compensation for how easily I can be hurt.
I can remember to answer "How are you?" with "Fine, thanks, and you?" sometimes, but I prefer to say something true. "My back is hurting a little today, but I'm still pretty happy. How are you feeling?" or "I didn't sleep well, don't you hate when that happens?" And I always remember to ask - with genuine interest - how my friends are feeling, what they are doing, and what matters to them. I hope that by doing so, I am inviting them to be honest with me and move beyond that social lie of "Fine, thanks."
Would it be a better world if we had our own Endora to cast a spell of honesty over us all? Would it all wrap up okay in the end, once grievences were aired and true feelings were discussed, beyond the stifled polite conversations and masks? I'm not sure, but I"d certainly like to think so.