Tag: lying

Good and Evil Basics

I used to be very confused about the difference between good and evil. It became something of an obsession. I tried to make sense of an adult world where there was a lot of saying one thing and doing another.

My mother used to talk about “white lies.” Statements that were somehow meant to “hide unpleasant facts” or “protect someone’s feelings.” It all seemed a little skewed and manipulative to me even as a young girl.

Sometimes it was a case of killing an ant with a sledgehammer. Overkill and unnecessary. Other times, it sure looked like someone (okay, my mother) was covering up some embarrassing lapse.

I am not advocating running around callously telling our complete truth to everyone we meet. That can get downright rude and cruel. And socially isolating. Integrity is based on the quality of your own degree of honesty with yourself.

It is a move away from the “nobody will notice” approach to morality to a perspective of “I will notice.” If we’re lucky, we eventually become our own gauge for standards and accountability. It is one of the key moral transitions we have to make to be fully adult.

So now here we are – full adults. The line between good and evil seems a lot less black and white rather than shades of grey on a continuum. Do I try to find the owner of that $20 I just found in the parking lot? Do I tell Auntie Mae what I think of her new fuchsia hat (with felt flowers) when asked? Do I decline the party invite outright or make up a mealy-mouthed (and dishonest) excuse?

Small challenges in the scheme of things, I realize. But small things have a way of growing into big things. And there is a universal truth about stepping over a forbidden line making it harder to step back into an honorable way of being. In the parlance, it’s called a “slippery slope.”

It is like the tragedy of crack addiction. It is often said one hit and you are on a runaway downhill train. Not starting something is a whole lot easier than quitting something we’ve begun.

On the upside, life does give us the gift of internalization in the maturation process. Once we have adopted and taken in a sense of morality as our own, we don’t think about it much as we go about our daily lives. It is just who we are. That’s a blessing.

The tiny discernments we make between good and evil do little to affect the larger good and evil in the world. But there is one thing that is certain, by being a good example of honesty and decency to yourself, you are not contributing to making things worse.

And you are likely a lot more interesting and pleasant person to be around. At least, compared to the legions of sleazy and lying schmucks out there.

Imploding

I both love and hate confrontation.

I love it because I am standing up for myself.

I hate it because it makes me feel uncomfortable things I don’t normally feel and don’t want to feel. It is an area of life in which I require considerably more finessing.

I am accustomed to deceit and trickery in social relations, and most frequently in family relations. Whether members of my family practiced deceit and trickery deliberately is almost beside the point. I remember the sickening sloshing about of unwelcome emotions in me as I stumbled upon one sad realization after another.

In many confrontations, I always hold out hope that I am about to discover someone made an “honest mistake.” For this mistake, they would rush in rapidly to own up and correct it. That’s funny, not funny.

If the transgressor’s intention was benign, they would have thought through and been aware of how their actions were going to hurt and undermine you. If their intentions were honorable and honest, they would not have let it happen in the first place.

When my father died, I repeatedly encountered this. My youngest sister was the sole executor. She had a “fiduciary” duty to treat her sisters – the two other beneficiaries – with an even hand. I knew what was going to happen from the minute I heard that Dad chose her as his representative.

She had treated me with disdain and disrespect for the previous 30 years. She hid this fact from my father. When he asked about our relationship, she lied to him and presented us as “best buds.” Her lying and deceit didn’t end there.

As the estate inexorably made its way through the legal system in a protracted start-stop process over the next 13 years, my sister made sure she profited handily from the arrangement. She loaned herself money from the estate while denying the same privilege to my sister and me.

She seconded all of my father’s personal effects without offering to share or allow access to select favored items for ourselves. Not even items that we had given Dad as gifts. She lied blithely to the estate attorney, the judges, and to me.

Any of my attempts at asking for parity or “fair dealing” were treated like so much dust and air. Even the most inconsequential of items – Dad’s old computer or special furnishings like a wooden coat rack – were withheld in the same manner as Aesop’s fable about the dog in the manger who hoarded hay he couldn’t eat.

In campaigning to become Dad’s executor in the years leading up to his death, she presented him with a special book as a Christmas gift: You Can’t Take It With You. It carefully detailed all of the horrors that could ensue without a proper estate plan and the “right” representative in place. Perhaps I see that more cynically than others might.

As it turned out, she disappeared on a Caribbean vacation in the days leading up to his death. She could not be reached by anyone for four days after he died. She swears she put her contact numbers on a Post-It note on her computer screen. It seems she forgot to tell anyone.

She left my father’s law books in a place where they went moldy and had to be trashed. She put all of his office furniture into a dumpster refusing all pleas from me to hold them. The buyers of the business building said they would happily have held on to those items for me “had they but known.” Having lost their parents themselves, they knew the sentimental value of the items my sister got rid of.

There were many confrontations in the aftermath of my father’s death. Mostly useless. The courts and society treat power with the same even hand. In spite of the evidence, no one would call out my sister for her shifty management of Dad’s funds and property.

I did learn one thing from that sad situation. In the end, Dad’s things didn’t really matter all that much. I grieved them and got over it. Less clutter to deal with.

It was the deeper wounds of treachery, deceit, and cruelty that hurt and caused the most longlasting damage. Mostly, the dissolution of any future facade of family. Permanent estrangement from both sisters was the final consequence. That is not said with bitterness but sadness. It was a preventable tragedy.

I had to walk away for my own self-protection and the preservation of my mental health. When I hear the stories of pettiness and fighting that still goes on among them, I sigh with relief. I no longer want to live or choose to live like that. Hurt people hurt people they say.

I also walked away with certainty about one thing. Whatever else underpinned the cruelty, deceitfulness, envy, and greed in the family situation, it was not solely my fault as my youngest sister was desperate to believe.

It is sad when families learn – like the stranded crew on Apollo 13 who struggled to maintain their cool in a life threatening situation – that after any degree of the fighting and conflict, we end up back in the same place. It is well to remember that in the aftermath of such conflict, our relationships might not make it intact.

The Four Agreements: 1/4

The first agreement in Don Miguel Ruiz’s book is: Be Impeccable with Your Word

So many people aren’t. Lying is commonplace and accepted these days. Expected even. People “exaggerate for effect” and “tell white lies” to gloss over deficiencies in themselves or some product they are selling. Politicians are among the least trusted professionals on the planet. The whole smarmy George Santos fiasco (is he gone yet?) took the falsification of credentials to despicable new heights.

Ruiz examines the power of the word, how it’s misunderstood, and how most people use it to spread emotional poison. Being impeccable with one’s word means taking responsibility for their own integrity. But he advises against judging or blaming oneself when we fall short. Life is a marathon after all, not a sprint.

Following this agreement faithfully, Ruiz claims clears emotional poison from one’s life by building immunity to the negative words of others, leading eventually to a place of peace and joy. Being honest and truthful can also neutralize emotional poison in oneself by saying only what is true for us – to ourselves and to others.

I don’t know about you, but I hate hurting people. I had been badly hurt in the past by words and the bad behavior that accompanied them. I know how that pain feels and don’t want to inflict it on others. For the longest time, I had no sense of my personal power so had no sense of how my words were taken by other people. Especially those close to me. In my youth, I said the words “I love you” too often and too casually, without considering their impact.

Worse, I had no clear concept of what “Love” actually meant. The recipient wasn’t getting much value from my declaration, to begin with. But neither I nor they realized how flakey my words were until it was too late. They became emotionally involved with me as one might expectedly do when they believe someone loves them.

If I eventually withdrew my “love,” (attention, support, time, benefits), both me and my erstwhile “lover” suffered. They suffered for the loss of someone they had come to believe loved them. I suffered for having spoken important words without full respect for another’s feelings.

There was a time when words were so respected in society that “a man’s word was his bond.” Contracts were made on a handshake after a discussion where terms were mutually agreed. Was that a perfect system? By no means. But it does speak to a time when words were valued more highly than they are now? It does.

Contracts are a lawyer’s mainstay and an anchor for the involved parties to cling to when dealings go awry. But even the most well-written contract provisions can be woefully inadequate to the business at hand. In family law, court orders can do more harm than good. A judge may order a mother and father to “co-parent.” But if they have what it takes to do that successfully, they likely could have made the marriage work.

So much which is sacred has been cheapened and derogated. Sexuality. Spirituality. Life itself. And even words. I have come to see words as delicate threads like spiderwebs that keep us attached to each other within our communities. But spiderwebs are very easy to destroy. So we live in a world where cynicism and pessimism rule. We expect people to lie to us. We expect them to let us down.

Ruiz shows us that we don’t have to do that. We can train ourselves to only say what we believe to be true. We can suppress words we don’t feel will help someone. We can keep our thoughts and opinions to ourselves until they are solicited. That may be easier said than done. But I can say from personal experience, that doing so leaves a lot less hurt feelings in your wake and gives you a lot less to regret in your life. For those reasons alone, it has been an “agreement” I have happily tried to pursue.