Sunday, August 5, 2012

Day 17: The Liar

The Liar. Have you met me? Have you met yourself?

The act of lying attempts to assuage the fear of what the liar unquestionably knows. The Liar lives with an ubiquitous fear of the truth of themselves.

When I lie, it is because I fear expressing the truth of myself. I may not be understood or accepted without the lies. Lying makes the fear of ourselves and others easier to tolerate. As liars, we make sport of beliefs by transforming what we know and don't know into another version of reality. We all need lies to make ourselves look better, sound better, appear better than the truth allows. And since the truth allows deceit, so much the better for us liars.

When I lie, it's done to cover up something that I said or did that I don't want you to know about because I need to look good for those I care about looking good for. Otherwise, the fear of a diminishment of stature rises within me, which needs to be quelled and silenced.

Besides, I'm sure you have noticed how much easier it is to lie than to tell the truth. Lying is second nature to most of us. The Lying Character was born from the memory of being burned (or threatened of being burned)  by the truth. The fear of the Truth may very well be one of the biggest fears within the human being.

Another factor of why we are such great liars is due to motivation. We have all seen others commit acts which lack integrity and foster greed, which seems to allow us all to copy these patterns of dishonest behavior. And it is all due to our inability to post up against the million faces of fear.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to submit to and take upon the mantle of the Liar.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to fear the consequences without the benefit of lies.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to deceive others with my lies, not realizing that I was only ever deceiving myself.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to find more comfort in telling lies than in telling the truth, especially about the truth of myself.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to create the character of the Liar as a coping tool against existential uncertainty and memories of suffering for the truth.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that I can "get away with lying," without realizing that nobody ever gets away with lying.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to know that I am self-dishonest yet also believe that I am a "good person," which is living one ginormous paradox.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to lie and cheat and still believe that I'm a good person.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to equate "success" with "never being caught in a lie."
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to equate "never being caught in a lie," with "cleverness."
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to use the Liar character in order to present a false picture presentation to others because I feared that presenting who I really am was insufficient.

I commit myself to not utilize the Liar Character in order to make myself more acceptable to others. Because what does that really mean? For others to have a more "favorable" opinion of who I am? People who don't even know me in the first place? It's simply an exercise in ego-building for me to manipulate people to have a favorable opinion of me. Useless. Irrelevant. Meaningless. Because what good does someone's opinion about me matter in this world. Not a whole hell of a lot.
I commit myself to not equate lying with cleverness. It isn't clever. It's stupid. When one is engaged with lying, one is engaging with creating a separation based on fear. It's a path to nowhere.
I commit myself to work on decreasing the amount of lies I tell every day and to grow in being more comfortable and open with others. 90-95% of the lies I tell are probably unnecessary, anyway. And 100% of my lies are based on fears. So by reducing the lies in my life I also reduce the fears, which to me is time well spent.
I commit myself to become more self-honest.












No comments:

Post a Comment