Is Lying Worth It?

This afternoon on my way between setting up for the debutant ball and picking Carter up at horse back riding I was in alone-in-the-car-nirvana listening to NPR on the radio.  NPR is my standard radio preset when I have the car to myself and not being subjected to teenager radio flicking between a large number of pop stations.  I thoroughly enjoyed my half hour of radio control, listening to a show called “Here and Now” where the host was interviewing an author named Sam Harris about his new book “Lying.”

Sam is a neuroscientist who went to Stanford as an undergraduate.  During his time at the superior institution he took a seminar called “The Ethical Analyst” where the class focused the whole course on one question; “Is it wrong to lie?”

It seems like an easy question to answer and thus could be a fairly short class that is one I would have liked to take.  Of course it is wrong to lie, but everyone, and I mean even those who were consider for Pope lies.  The only book I remember from my years as an undergraduate was called, “How to Lie with Statistics” in my history writing class, so much for the difference between Dickinson and Stanford.

Sam Harris talked about how much easier life is if you just don’t lie, even little white lies that you tell not to hurt someone else’s feelings.  I have no idea if his book is any good, but listening to him got me thinking abut the whole subject and how having a daily blog has made me much more honest.

I think that writing honestly about my daily activities has been a huge bonus to my owning my health.  Now I am not saying that I come close to not lying.  I am a big storyteller after all and some stories are improved with a little poetic license.  My mother tells people that all the stories about her are just not true, but my stories are just my point of view.  She should claim that the nice stories about her are really very true.

One area Mr. Harris talked about people lying was the lies people tell to avoid embarrassment. For me the blog must be true because there is no way I could remember what I said if it just was not exactly what actually happened, or at least happened as I felt it.  Living a life out loud is much simpler for me.  And I have never been one to be considered quiet in the first place.  So on this point I agree with him.

Since my big issue is my weight that was not something I could hide.  When I am fat everyone could see it, there was no way around it.  Once I accepted that I was able to deal with it head on.  The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves.  When I told myself I was fat and only I could do something about it I was much more able to change it.

Now I am southern, so cutting out all lying is going to be a tricky thing to accomplish.  When someone asks me what I think of their chicken salad is it necessary for me to tell them exactly how I feel about it?  It is going to take all my creativity to remain cordial and truthful at the same time, but I think it is worth a try.  I think I am more than 90% there with almost two years of blogs behind me telling the truth everyday.  This is going to be hard.  I may or may not report in on the progress depending on how badly it goes, just being honest here.