Jack and Ruby,
Don’t lie. Don’t lie ever, don’t lie to protect anyone, and don’t lie to make yourself look good, or influence other people’s opinions of you. Don’t lie even if people don’t want to hear the truth. It’s almost always possible–or easier to lie. Do it as little as possible, it cancers everything. There are a million reasons why you should never lie, and a million mistakes I’ve made in my life have been as a result of my own lying. My relationship with my parents is strained because of lies told by all parties. I want better for you. I hope to set a good example.
I can think of no situation that’s improved by a lie. I’ve lied for loads of reasons:
These range from the somewhat innocuous “yes, dear the trash has been taken out,” to the seemingly noble lies to “protect my family’s reputation,” to exaggerations about the past, to deceptions to make Heather not worry about our finances. I’ve lied, and I’m done. To cover up for work I’ve left undone, whatever. It’s never good.
I’ve lied to amuse myself, I’ve lied to try to ingratiate myself with others. I’ve lied to get a girl to go out with me, and I’ve lied to clients of mine. I’ve lied to protect my reputation from my own decisions. I’ve lied too much. I’ve even lied about my courtship with Heather–a fabricated story that we’ve had to trot out at family gatherings for damn near now that quite nearly feels like the truth. It’s not the truth–we edited it to connect with our own parents. This can’t come as a surprise as we tried to conceal our marriage for months.
The cover up is worse than the crime. We can forgive (condone) impulsivity, being a little reckless, wild or sloppy. When we cover it up and try to pass off fiction as fact is when we go down a path probably ends in Howard Hughes land.
Our society has made “flip flopping,” or changing of your mind impossible, so when you lie, it quickly gets to the point where fresh lies are required to cover up the old lies. We can’t say, “Hey, I lied about that,” because we have a societal hypocrisy. It was played out in major league baseball. Everybody knows that our baseball heros were using steroids. When they came out to admit the obvious, they still tried to maintain some innocence, some “victim of circumstance” nonsense.
If you lie, it becomes easier to lie, and the riffs and embellishments on a trivial amusement mess with your head. It becomes harder to distinguish fact from fiction, and it becomes more of a trick to tell the truth. It’s a cliche- each lie paves the way for the next one, but it’s true.
People figure it out anyway. You’ll rarely fool someone, they are just tolerating you and factoring in the amount that you lie as part of the equation. There are many who claim that they have pristine integrity, and they are often the biggest and most deluded liars you’ll meet: they have confused themselves and they gave made a life such that they believe the nonsense that they spin.
I hope that I never lie to you. I hope that I don’t get lazy and try to fabricate some end-justifies-the-means stuff like my folks did. I know you’ll be able to tell if I do, so I’ll try not to bother. If you lie to me, I’ll forgive you. Admit it. Tell the truth, and it’ll make it go away. The crime will always require a reckoning, but lying is always the wrong choice. It erodes your sense of self, and it’s a wrong thing every time.
One of the things that happens when you tell lies is that people form attachments to an unreal version of you. Any achievements that you might have had are fradulent, any friendships are precarious. Why? Because they are resting on a foundation of garbage, that you’re always afraid will get found out.
Enough lecturing. I’ll do what I can to set a good example all your life. I’ll do what I can to be the dad that every child deserves, and I’ll make sure that we don’t perpetuate anything that we’ve done.
Be really who you are. At some level you’ll always know when you’ve lied and it taints and haunts the rest of your life.
I’m yours, and I hope to set a good example for you.
Love,
Dad
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