Lying is deliberately saying what we know not to be the case. There are big lies where we want to cover up something we did that we do not want others to know about. In that case, there is a double thing. There is the lie, then there is the thing we do not want others to know about. When we are tempted to lie in that way, we ask ourselves, “What did I do that I don’t want others to know about?” We need to do a little bit of introspection about that because maybe we should not have been doing the action to start with, and then we would not have the need to lie about it.

There are other kinds of lies we do, what we call “little white lies”. They are still lies, aren’t they? They are not telling the truth. Often, people tell these little white lies because they think they are going to, somehow, protect somebody else, but they usually do not. If you are home and you do not want to talk to somebody on the phone you say, “I’m busy, I’ll call you back.” You do not need to say, “Tell them I’m not here.” People will understand you are busy, and you will call them back.

Then there are other lies we do to cover up for ourselves. We did something and we do not really want to own up to it, so we lie to cover it up. Or we do not want to get caught doing some small thing, so we lie. Or we think somebody is going to disapprove of what we are going to do, or they are going to speak harshly to us over some small matter, so we cover it up and lie. That can become quite a pattern in our lives. We should stop and ask ourselves, “Why am I doing this?”

It already involves a presupposition that the other person is going to judge me. I cannot say things honestly because I am sure that, even though it is a small thing, somebody is going to disapprove, somebody is going to judge me, or somebody is going to criticise me. That is pretending that we are mindreaders, isn’t it? It is not trusting the other person very much, that they are going to respond in an understanding way. It is also not being honest about what we are doing and taking responsibility for it.

It is good to just say things and hope people will understand. If they do not, then you talk about it, explain it and then they understand. What is so detrimental about lying is that it destroys trust. If somebody tells you a big lie, and you find out about it later, do you trust that person afterwards? Forget it. Much better just to monitor our actions, be truthful about what we do, and move on.

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