A Modest Proposal

Uncommon thinking about common experiences
inspired by a quote attributed to Albert Einstein:
“Today’s problems cannot be solved at the same
level of thinking that created them.”

Lies, lies, lies

July 11, 2004

I am a liar. That is not an easy thing to say, but it is true. I suspect that you are one as well since the simple definition of a liar is someone who did not tell the truth, and I know no one who has not at one time or another told a lie. Oh sure, it may have been one of those little “white” ones which do not hurt anyone like lying about one’s age; it is nonetheless a lie and the person who tells it is a liar. Since we are all liars, let’s take a look at this common bond we share.

There are many kinds of lies. There are the white ones, the big ones, the little ones, the “justified” ones (“He really doesn’t need to know he has cancer.”), the half-truth, the omission, the quiet ones, and so forth. Heck, since everybody does it, what is the problem? I know our governments lie to us, parents lie to children, children lie to parents, schools lie to students, spouses lie to one another, companies lie to stockholders and employees, the medical community lies to patients, and politicians lie to everyone including themselves… Whew, seems like a pandemic… and it is.

The core of a lie “lies” in the concept of truth. What is truth, and why, at times, do we so desperately want to conceal, ignore, and twist it? Defining truth is really not simple. Truth can change over time. What is true today is not necessarily true tomorrow. Truth is an interpretation in the moment of what is real for an individual. Reality itself is suspect; consider a courtroom trial in which witnesses have different accounts of what happened, and each one is hopefully telling the truth as he recalls it. All our perceptions (hearing, seeing, touch, smell, and taste) are mediated by our brains and interpreted in a way that fits our individual selves and egos. Two people can have the same experience (and so received the same perceptual input) and have different recollections, and both people believe that they are telling the truth although their versions may be very different.

From this somewhat confusing mish-mash of body, mind, and emotions, it is not so confusing to conclude that truth is hard to pin down. Let’s try this… what if I define truth as whatever I believe in my heart is indeed real (for me of course)? For the totally left-brained I know this is not going to sit well, but it leads me to where I want to go with this Modest Proposal.

First, a small diversion and another question… what if I wanted to declare that I am going to be an honest person and am done with lying? Where would I start?

I thought about this for a while, and my conclusion is that I need to start with myself – telling myself that the truth is what I believe in my heart. Seems simple enough... but is it really? “What I believe…” is simple – most of us know what we believe. How many of us know what we believe in our hearts? In past writings, I used two expressions: “It is not what I do that is important; it is why I do it.” The other is: “My heart should shape my head, not my head shaping my heart.”

If I really know why I do something, then I have achieved a state of truth about what I did that transcends the act itself even if the act is by most measures a terrible one. Remember, I am writing about what happens internally, not what society or religion may teach is right or wrong. Maybe the act is not one that forwards me in my spiritual evolution, but if I know that is the case, then I am progressing albeit more slowly than I may want to.

When I know the why’s of my actions, then I have a basis for beginning to allow my heart to shape my head. When the head is running the show, my heart is in despair for the head is not necessarily (and rarely) going to make choices (yeah, there is that word again) that are in my best and highest interest. When my head knows the why of my action via my heart and understands how that action was not in my highest and best interest, then my head can finally yield to my heart, and, ahem, guess what happens?

Truth happens and thus begins honesty.

Let me relate a personal experience… I came very close to seriously damaging my relationship with my partner, a woman who values honesty virtually over all other qualities. I lied to her. They were not “big deal” lies to my head; the lies were about my past before she and I came together – what happened in the past really had no bearing on the present. Hey, what’s in the past should stay in the past! Right? No! The problem was not what I lied about, but that I lied. It took me some time to figure that out because my head did not want to acknowledge what my heart was trying to tell it. My heart knew – my head ignored the message. After a series of such lies finally finding their way into the light, I got the message: she needed honesty in our relationship and if I did not provide it, then our relationship was in jeopardy. She would not live with a liar; she would still love me but from afar.

I am now honest with her. Do I tell her everything? No, I don’t, but I do tell her what impacts her and our relationship. Is it difficult at times to do that? You bet! Nonetheless, as someone once said, “The great thing about telling the truth is that you don’t have to remember what you said.” Will I tell lies in the future? Well, probably I will (but not to her), and hopefully my lies-over-time ratio (at last something for the left-brained) will be smaller and smaller.

My modest proposal to you is to consider the power of allowing your heart to shape your head for it is not only the path to honesty, it opens many other doors as well. The starting point is to be honest with myself. It is very difficult to be honest to others if I am not first honest with myself. Being honest with myself is a matter of allowing my intuition or inner guidance to be heard by quieting the yammering of my ego and tuning into the voice or feeling that is always there. Each one of us can do this – it is a matter of being vigilant and identifying one’s inner guidance.

The “whys” of my actions are far more beneficial to me to understand than the actions themselves. When I understand the truth of why I do something then I am spiritually evolving. When I ignore the truth, I am either walking backwards or marching in place. Please think about it.

May you discern with compassion…
Ron McCray