Telling the truth

How would our world change if we all told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Many years back I was talking to a woman who considered herself to be a counselor. She wanted me to tell a lie to gain an end, and I informed her that I was virtually incapable of telling lies. She diagnosed me as autistic. I was shocked. I was brought up to not tell lies, and I had always imagined this was a good behaviour, and now I am told I am mentally ill because I cannot tell lies?

At around that time I heard an interview with Sharon Osborne where she told the interviewer that Ozzy Osborne was incapable of telling lies. For this reason she conducted all his business negotiations and would not allow him to participate, because he would simply tell the truth. And, as we know, truthfulness is not what business negotiations are about.

So does truthfulness matter? What would happen to the world if we all told the truth, all the time. And does it have to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Or would that quite simply be cruel? Do we have to at least modify the truth to oil the social machine?

I speculate that we will go a long way towards creating a new and better culture to live in if we never tell another lie. What would life look like if we just test everything we want to do with “does it require a lie?” I am guessing we won’t go far wrong - after we get over our tendency to take offense, and particularly, once we start to be truthful with ourselves.

Obviously, this will take time. We will need to take care initially as we need time to adapt to truthfulness, given many, most or all of our relationships are premised on lies.

We know this culture is no longer serving us. We know everyone lies to us, and believes we lie in turn. We have to start somewhere, so let’s start by telling the truth. 

There can be no community without trust and there can be no trust without truthfulness.

Truthfulness: a short course

We live in a culture where lying is the norm.  But when we tell our first lie to someone we are close to, and they find out, we lose their trust – for good.  You think you are truthful? Try this little course in truthfulness. It gets tougher as the week goes on.

Monday: Find one white lie you have told in the past, and go tell the person you lied to. This is something that no longer matters. “Yes is was me who broke the handle off the teapot.” Or find one situation where you should have told the truth and didn’t. “Last time I was in here, you charged me the wrong price on those grapefruit. I owe you $2.00”.

Tuesday: Identify one small secret fear you are living with now and share it. “You know, I get pretty scared about losing my job.” Or find one “omission” you are living with – something you don’t tell other people that is going on inside you, perhaps something that you fear you might be ridiculed for. “I believe in ghosts.” Make sure it is something that won’t freak the other person out.

Wednesday: Find one small lie you are maintaining with someone close to you, and tell them. “You know that striped jumper I told you that you look fabulous in. Really, I don’t like it.” Make sure it is not too challenging, and if you need to, soften the blow with a second truth. …”but I really love that new red one”.

Thursday: Find one big lie you are maintaining in order to earn money. Are you pretending to like the work, are you pretending to be better than you are, or worse than you are. Are you pretending to like a client or like a boss, or like a workmate, or like a product you really can’t stand or don’t trust. If you are like most of us, you could fill a page with these lies. Write down as many as you can think of, but don’t share them with those affected unless you are ready to earn your income a different way. You may want to share them with a friend who is not associated with your workplace so that you can hear yourself say them out loud.

Friday: Find one thing that you feel guilty about and say it out loud; something that haunts you. If you have someone you really trust, share it. If you don’t want to share it, ask yourself why. “You know, I was pretty insensitive towards my mother back then. I didn’t realise she was sick and I would do it differently now if I could.”

Saturday: Find one big lie you are maintaining with someone close to you. Don’t share this one. Just start working out what the flow on is from it – is it leading you into a bigger and bigger web of lies? What would be the consequences if you told the truth? Is there any way you can extract yourself without destroying your relationship? These can be hard to own up to, because once you do, you might find you have to fix things. This could be one to get professional help to sort out.

Sunday: Find one really big lie you have told yourself and never really admitted, even to yourself. Say it out loud. No-one else need ever hear this one. “I was in love with someone else when I married.” But you might find that once you have said it out loud to yourself, it loses its sting.

Monday: Start all over again. By now the floodgates should be open, and your big question will be, “How do I stop telling any more new lies?”

It’s not as easy as it looks at first glance.