Mendacity

men·dac·i·ty //   (mn-ds-t)

n. pl. men·dac·i·ties 1. The condition of being mendacious; untruthfulness.

2. A lie; a falsehood.

The clip above is from one of my favorite movies, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  This scene is the pivot point of the movie where Big Daddy confronts Brick and we finally find out his motivation and the theme of the movie.  I love this movie because of the character arcs and the fact we never really find out about the relatioship between Brick and Skip.  We can imply but that is all.  If you can, try and find this movie and watch it, you will be glad you did.

However, onto the point of all this, lying.  I hate it.  With a passion. I used to be an excellent liar, or story teller as the new age educators called it.  But one time I told one lie too many and it came back to me.  But I was eight so you’ll have to excuse me.  I resolved then and there to tell the truth no matter what, because the truth may hurt but lying can hurt others.

Don’t get me wrong here, telling the truth can be painful too.  To yourself and the person you are telling or telling about so I use discretion.  I withold information all the time, that is not lying, that is being discreet.

I was in a relationship once in my youth and it all came crashing down one day because of the lies that swirled around and encompassed it.  In fact it was based on one big lie.  When that was exposed I was devastated.  So much so that it changed the course of my life.  I did recover but I now hate lies with a passion.

And they are everywhere.  Don’t beleive me?  Look at any TV show.  Friends was always based on lying.  One person knew or did something and spend the rest of the show trying to cover it up by lying some more.  It all was exposed in the end, people laughed and everything was ok. Thus justifying all the lying.  What a nice message to be sending out.  Lying is OK, the TV said so. It was pure agony for me to watch, so I stopped.

I encounter lies more and more these days.  Yesterday a prominent member of the blogging community was exposed (I’m not saying who, I’m being discreet).  They claimed to be one thing and yet were another.  Does that matter?  Damed right it does.  This is not TV and you are not Remmington Steele.  If you are a female pretending to be male then everything you say is coloured by that.  Its not like you said you were from Slovakia when you are really from the Czech Republic or that you are a blonde when you really are a brunette.  Being male or female is fundamental to who we are and lying about it it just about the worst lie you can tell. This is not the Crying Game folks, this is real life even if it is in blogoland.  I hope this person suffers for the deception, that is not spiteful, that is justice.  And I hope they learn their lesson to and start a new way of life based on truth.

So, if you have been lying, tell the truth.  It  will hurt, it may hurt a lot but it is the last hurt because after you come clean you can move forward.  You can build a life based on truth not a straw house based on lies.

Start right now.  Leave a comment with the truth about a lie you have been keeping.  I’ll start.  I didn’t win the Fraser Valley Amateur Rally championship for subcomapcts in 1998. I came second.  I say I came first because of an inept scorer.  But I didn’t.

There, I feel better,  now its your turn. Once you start here, keep going, you’ll feel better and sleep better and you won’t be stressed out trying to keep track of all the lies.