TO LIE THEN DENY

There comes a point in everyone’s life where you feel the need to tell an untruth. A lie. Some will stop at the statement of a lie, offering no explanations. But then others will take it a step further and deny its existence altogether by covering it up. Hoping nobody will notice.

They will have somehow convinced themselves that what they are saying is, in fact, the truth. Say it enough times and it becomes true.

‘Did you brush your teeth?’, you ask your child.

‘Yes’, he replies as you notice a smudge of Nutella stuck on his teeth.

‘Are you sure you brushed your teeth?’, you give him another chance to come clean before you point out the evidence.

‘Of course!’, he exclaims as he tries to make you aware that his toothbrush is wet.

It starts at a young age when children believe they can get away with telling their parents the smallest of lies. Ones with little significance to impact their safety. As they grow older, the stories get longer and more creative.

‘My friend and I were at the pool and I was running when the lifeguard told me not to run and I fell by the pool’, your daughter tells you as she shows off her skinned knee, covered in dried up blood from the day before. You really want to believe her but deep down know the story doesn’t sound right. And then you find out she disobeyed you and did something she was not supposed to do. Something that was potentially life threatening. What’s worse is that she started to cover it up with even more lies.

When we are young, we believe we are invincible. Nothing can harm us. We believe we can disobey our parents’ instructions and nothing will happen to us. Until it does. Sometimes you get lucky and nobody gets seriously injured. Other times you find yourself in the hospital or worse. That is when we find out that no amount of covering up will keep a lie buried. It slowly surfaces and reveals itself when we least expect it.

As we transition to adulthood, we continue to deceive our partners. Especially when they have discovered our addictions which slowly start to impact the health of not only our partner, but the family as a whole.

‘Were you drinking?’, you ask your husband as you notice drops of some kind by the front door you know were not there earlier.

‘No, I told you I stopped’, he exclaims with anger.

‘Then what are these spots on the floor?!’, you shout out as you have become a very skilled detective going so far as to inspect the dried spots to determine they are indeed the remnants of beer. Drops which escaped the plastic bag as the evidence was being taken outside.

‘What are you now a detective?!’, he retorts. ‘Why, yes I am’, you think to yourself. And so, the argument continues until you are too tired to argue anymore.

As soon as we start to cover up the initial lie with another one, we run the risk of losing track of which lies we have told. We falter. We backtrack. We start talking faster and getting upset at the other person for having discovered the truth. In the end, the truth finds a way to reveal itself.

When we start to lie then deny the existence of that lie, we set ourselves up for more pain than if we had admitted to the lie in the first place. Though it might seem difficult to admit having done something we should not have done, for the most part, the punishment will be a lesser one than if you allow that lie to evolve into something extraordinary.

Eventually the truth will win.