It’s easy to lie.  I get it.  I’m familiar with being in an uncomfortable position where your honesty offends someone you love.  I understand when you want to make a hard stand for truth, but the costs of your words are more than what you feel you can afford. Yet for some reason, I hate being lied to. And more than that, I hate a liar.  I would rather have the truth put me in tears than smile at a lie.  I think that’s why I never had a great affection for television and movies, shows blur the lines between fiction and facts even more than people do.

I’m not alone on this.  Though it may be easy to lie, as humans, we seek the truth.  We want to know the truth about who we are, our history, and we certainly look to professionals for truth.  Who would willingly go to a physician that lied about their health?  Who would admittingly put their lives or safety in the hands of those that lack integrity?  But we do it daily.  We stereotype certain professions to be dishonest, like lawyers and politicians.  It makes me sick to think that we have politicians that are only known for inaccuracies.  We have law enforcement officers that take sides instead of stand in truth. Our media not only sensationalizes stories, it highly biased. It’s got to stop.  We are distorting the truth to the point that one day, we won’t have a clear story to tell the next generation.

Do you tell the truth? Think about how you talk to yourself. Is it with truthfulness? Is the truth somewhere distorted with sarcasm? Do you present your authentic self to your family, coworkers and others? I tried it. I made an intention to be truthful and completely honest for 1 week. It was harder than I thought it would be. In a moment of frustration, a sales clerk asked how I was. Instead of saying I was fine, I looked up and answered, “I’m on a fast moving train to crazy town right now, but how are you today?” The lady chuckled and said she was great. There was no judgement. I didn’t win anything for telling the truth, I had to speak the truth to stop the little lies.

There are no passes given for white lies or lies that “don’t hurt anyone”. White lies are the real lies; we’re conscious and are just lying for the sake of lying.  I’ve been guilty of it.  Whether it’s lying about how someone looks in an outfit to telling someone on the street that I don’t have any money.  We lie to our children on a regular basis about half our holidays.  I’m waiting for my daughter to realize the truth about Santa and the Easter Bunny then question if we are really thankful on Thanksgiving.  Speaking of lies told to children, I once told my daughter that the store clerks in Target were going to give her a ticket if she didn’t stop throwing groceries out of the basket.  I was exhausted of her behavior, but that doesn’t justify my own.  We are embarrassed at the lies we tell.  Yet somehow we fix our mouths to say them.  One of the top qualities look for in a partner is honesty. What’s hilarious is we don’t enforce it to our partners, ourselves or anyone else.

When is it ok to lie? Lying helps us avoid humiliation and embarrassment.  It protects our allies, interest, privacy and can protect us from punishment or harm.  There’s a long and a short answer to when lying is ok, but we can sum it up best by saying, never.  It is not acceptable to lie.  In order for humans to feel safe, we must trust one another.  In order to develop trust, we must have honesty and transparency. Lying destroys trust, in all it’s forms.  It forces us to be liars.  Our silence of those who lie makes us complacent.

Our challenge today is to hold people to telling the truth.  Be honest and transparent, even when it makes us look bad.  Tell the truth.  Stand for the truth.  Let’s create a world that we will be proud to leave our next generation.  We can do it through changing our lens on truth.