Lies

My blogger friend Nick has two posts on Lying and I recommend that my readers read both along with the comments and responses from Nick to get a flavour of this very worthwhile subject. The first one is “It’s good to lie” closely followed by “What a whopper!”

My experience with this has been an amazing, lifelong, envy and I suspect, in some cases, disgust. It all started with a joke and now it has spun out of control, with my father of all people, convinced that it is true.

When my hips were replaced, I was just 44 years old. It was tedious to explain why I had to get them replaced and on the spur of a moment came up with a joke about the reason that has stayed with me all these years. I told the enquirer that I had to jump out of a second floor bed room. He insisted on knowing why I had to jump and I responded that the husband unexpectedly arrived. After the initial shock and subsequent laughter, this became the story behind my ever present walking stick. I have told this, my son has told this and many of my friends and relatives have told this innumerable times and the envy and/or disgust is due to this Chinese whisper campaign that has created a legend out of a joke.

So, when I came across these two quotes in one of the books that I am currently reading, I wondered if the joke was a subconscious desire to be something that I was not!

“I think that lies are like wishes. So when you wish you were a certain kind of person that you know you’re not, and maybe you’re not willing to do what it would take to become that person or can’t go back, then it becomes very tempting to lie.”

“your lies often reveal who you wish you were.”

– Bella DePaulo, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, in her book “The Lies We Tell And The Clues We Miss”.

Now that he has been researching ‘lies’ and whoppers’, I am sure that Nick would have something quite serious to say about this. I am also eagerly looking forward to some enlightening comments from some of my male readers as to whether it is envy or disgust or whatever else it may be! I shall of course face the music that the lady readers will have to offer.

What do you think?