The more questions I am asked about my life, the more I find myself lying. They aren't blatant lies, but rather omissions of a complete detailed truth. In regard to the negative sides of our lives, no one likes to express every detail, so we lie or omit.
It is in everything we do: work, career goals, individual goals, future plans, relationships, etc.
I find myself making an effort to put myself in a better light, even if it wouldn't make a difference to the person I'm talking to. The reason it won't make a difference is because a majority of people with whom you discuss your life care less about the details than the conversation itself. Most of the time it is for the sake of having conversation.
BLIND CURIOSITY OFTEN REMAINS BLIND
What has become even more obvious is that people would rather you omit some of those details. When someone asks, "How are things?", it is best to just say, "They're fine."
Although a majority of our conversations are done in passing with people who haven't earned the right to become entangled, or in the least, involved in our lives, there are those who do care and want to know how things are. Those questions are asked more out of concern rather than a blind curiosity that would rather remain blind.
These are the people not worth lying to or omitting information. In my fictional book, Fight, I wrote this line, "Even while you lie to the masses, you need to have someone you can be honest with."
FIND SOMEONE TO BE HONEST WITH
I think I may have written that sentence more for me than for the characters in my book. Even the most honest of people have a very hard time being brutally honest with themselves. Having someone they can be honest with helps them keep an open and honest mind about their own lives. If you're afraid to tell at least one person you’re closest to the God's honest truth, then you're living a lie.
We don’t need a group; we need individuals. We need relationships, and relationships that can take a beating with both sides open for those beatings.
If you can't tell someone you are afraid, then you will live in fear. We are all afraid. This I have found out, and commonly about the same thing: life. We fear life and if we don't have someone we can confront those fears with, then we are doomed to be dominated by that fear.
SHALLOW CONVERSATIONS MAKE FOR SHALLOW RELATIONS
It's not about having someone to talk to. It's about speaking truthfully with someone. Pointless, blind conversations are a part of our everyday life. We run into people who don't care about our details. We have relationships with those people—often shallow relationships. And if those are the only relationships you are building, then you are lying for the good of nothing.
Because at the end of the day and at the end of life, you won't have lied to those people, you will have lied to yourself. And that is alarming. It really isn't about how much we lie as it is to whom we lie or omit.
Whether you are 18 or 80, find someone not worth lying to and you'll find that telling the truth—the God's honest, brutal truth—is good for more than something. It's good for everything.