Under the Raydar — 10/7/10

I asked a friend of mine a personal question this past week, and he responded very thoughtfully, ending his answer with, “And I mean that. Really. This week, I’ve decided that I’m not going to lie. To anyone. About anything.”

I took a page out of his manuscript, and tried it myself for a few days. I asked my friend how he had been faring, and he said that the process helped him realize how often he just side-steps honesty with a blanket answer. If someone asks, “Hey, I’m having a party tonight and I’d like to see you there. Can you make it?” the knee-jerk reaction might be, “Sure, sounds good.”
In your head, you are really thinking something else. Maybe you’re thinking, “No, I won’t come by. It’s nothing personal, I just have other plans.” Or, “Actually you are pretty annoying and I am definitely not going to show up.” Or what have you.

We lie almost reflexively: to make things more interesting, to raise our self esteem, to avoid a long-winded story, to one-up each other. We don’t even really consider the little “white lies” we tell as part of our daily discourse.

In The Day America Told the Truth, it was reported that 91 percent of individuals surveyed admitted that they lie routinely about matters they consider trivial, 36 percent reported lying about “important matters,” 86 percent lied regularly to parents, 75 percent to friends, 73 percent to siblings and 69 percent to spouses. Also, for the record, I did not read this book; I just used “Google Books.”

In an article in LiveScience (which I did read!), Robin Lloyd states, “people are so engaged in managing how others perceive them that they are often unable to separate truth from fiction in their own minds.” In one study, two people were placed in a room together for ten minutes to have a conversation, and while they talked 60 percent of people lied, telling about 2.92 inaccurate things; however, when polled, most reported that they had not said anything inaccurate. We do it without registering that we are doing it; we blur the line between fiction and fact every day — not just to others, but to ourselves.

A friend and I were having lunch and I asked her how she was, and she automatically said, “Good,” only to cut herself off, saying, “Actually, well there’s a lot going on.” Then, sitting in Proctor, we both told each other how we really were, avoiding such then-inaccuracies as “good” or “bad.” We were hopeful, confused, stressed, excited, bored, tired, caffeinated, as many dualities as you could think of. We could think of them too, once we actually considered it. Instead of writing off how we truly felt with a bland paraphrase, we opened up conversationally and introspectively.
Maybe it is impractical to always tell the truth. Maybe it is a burden. Maybe when you are passing someone on your way to class, it is easier and more socially normative to answer with “Good, you?” instead of “Actually kind of sh*tty, but things are looking up.”

But after that lunch, and in my friend’s experience after his little experiment, it sure feels great to tell the truth. No, not great. It feels awkward at first, and then brave, and then reassuring, and then exciting.

In the end, I’m not sure how much I lie, or why we lie, or if it is even possible to be completely honest. But I do know that it is refreshing, and that the next time we run into each other outside of the library, I’m going to try my best to answer with more than a generic “good.”