Lying or intentionally deceiving others, really brings into focus how we use our speech. Some people see lying as completely justified, and if we ever feel that we must lie about something, it is good to ask ourselves, “What am I doing that I don’t want others to know about?” Usually whatever we are doing is not so good if we do not want other people to know about it. We often justify “little” white lies to ourselves by saying we do not want to hurt other people’s feelings, but some of the things we lie about may not actually hurt anyone’s feelings. For example, if we do not want to take a telephone call, there is nothing wrong with telling whoever answers the phone to tell the caller we are busy and to call back later; we do not need to ask them to lie and tell the caller we are not there.

Exaggerating things or presenting them in an untrue light also falls into the category of lying. Here it is kind of tricky though because we should learn how to distinguish between skillful speech and intentional deception. Of course, we should take care to present issues in ways that other people can understand, especially those who may have different views, backgrounds, or values. But we also have to make sure that we do not fall into misrepresenting the situation or making something appear a certain way that is not true.

For example, we might have forgotten to do something, but when somebody asks us about the situation we say, “Well, I was going to wait and check back later to see if it was still necessary to do.” We do this to save face rather than admit that we had forgotten about it or made a mistake. When people ask us about our behaviour and we explain it in a way that presents us in a positive light, we may think, “Well, I’m just explaining it this way so they’ll understand. I don’t want to make a big deal out of something that’s not really a big deal.” But if we look more closely at our motivation, we might find that we are actually trying to avoid blame by actively covering up something. It is good to pay attention to all these aspects of truthful speech.

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