Lie To Me!
In the TV show, "Lie to Me", the fictional firm "The Lightman Group" consults for law enforcement, businesses and individuals in the real life science of reading micro-expressions. It is a science based on the observation that quick, small, almost unnoticeable expressions that all humans make, have a universal meaning. They give away what is going on in our heads. If you are one of the experts in this field, you can read a persons facial expressions and know what they are feeling; whether it's shame, disgust, anger, and most important, lies. You might think that this is a wonderful skill to have. No one would be able to pull the wool over your eyes, right? You would be able to read what is going on in a competitors mind and use it to get the upper hand in business. These are but a few benefits of having this ability. But for the Cal Lightman, owner and expert of the fictional Lightman Group, this gift is actually a curse. He can't have a normal relationship with anyone. He reads each face like a book, whether he wants to or not, and because of that even normal family relationships are impossible for him. It seems that what we think would be deemed as hurtful, painful, and maybe even shocking, if those we love really knew what was going on in our heads. And one of the worse transgressions is the lie. Once it is exposed, a relationship may never recover. Why? Because we are all taught from the time that we are small children that lying is bad and that liars are bad. We even have Pinocchio as a cautionary tale teaching children the dangers of the vice of lying. Most people would agree with this right? Well, I'm going to say, "Wrong" and here's why.
During the course of any given day, we all have random thought that even we, if we gave pause, might find shocking. We have those involuntary thought of nastiness that pops into our heads without being conscious of doing so. These thoughts we know to filter and of course we also know that they should stay where they belong; in our heads. It is our actions and interactions with people, happening during the course of a day, are the source of the conscious decisions to lie. Sometimes it's a simple decision that we don't even think of as a lie. If I as my husband how does my rear end look in a pair of pants before going out to dinner, I doubt he is thinking he is lying when he says, "Great". It just flows out of his mouth as easily as he says, "Hello". Now replay that, and going on the assumption that all lies are bad, he tells me, "Gee Honey, those pants make your butt look like the side of a house". I think we might have a long quite car ride to our destination. This is a " White Lie " it is told to avoid the harmful realistic implications of the truth. Along the same lines is the Emergency Lie. This is one we often use. It is told to cover for a person to another person. Caught your friends husband playing golf with your husband and he asks for you to tell his wife that he is mowing the lawn. I think we can all relate.
A different example of a lie can be found during our actions over the course of any given day. We fool around on line with our friends both male and female in slightly naughty conversations. We tell a girl friend a bit of gossip about a friend or a secret about our marriage. But for many of our mates these dialogs no matter how harmless they are would leave them very uncomfortable if not very upset. So we conveniently omit disclosure of these interludes from our mates. But what we often forget, that an omission of a fact is a passive lie. And so we keep these lies to ourselves to protect the feelings of others or to protect ourselves from unnecessary confrontations. This is a "Lie of Omission"
Then there is " The Conscious Lie ". The kind of lie that is a purposely contrived to cover up for something we have done wrong. This is the most dangerous of lies. An example would be a spouse that has had a onetime indiscretion. If they lie about the affair, then life goes on with the liar living with their guilt and knowing the truth. On the other hand, if you tell the truth, you may relieve yourself of the guilt, only to find that you have done an irreparable damage to your relationship. There is a danger to the flip side of this lie. If you choose to lie about such a serious matter, there comes the propensity to lie about such an event again and again. It takes brutal honesty with yourself to know whether you are lying to protect your partner, or lying to protect yourself and the life you have grown comfortable with. The Conscious Lie is one that should not be entered into lightly. And although it may be compounded by the lie of omission, it is the level of the deed and whether it's a pattern of behavior that is in question.
I would say that most people engage in the first two examples of lying daily. They are harmless and help us maintain the relationships where brutal honesty would be viewed with anger, hurt and pain. They help smooth out the rough patches in the messy lives that we live. We have all done conscious lying, too, the frequency of which is a reflection of our character. I know that most of us have been taught not to lie, and most of us don't do more than a white lie, a lie of omission or an emergency lie. Some say that we should never lie. As for myself, unless it is about another woman, lie to me!
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