I Am a Liar (eBook)

CHAPTER 2

Why Do We Lie?

Some would say that if the lie does not hurt anyone, then proceed accordingly. That if you are not intentionally out to deceive but merely striving to survive in an unforgiving world, feel free to go for it. It seems we are trained from an early age to lie to avoid getting into trouble. Your mom or dad stands over you with a dissatisfied grimace and interrogates you like you are on trial: “Okay. Who did it?” Instinctively, it seems our brain quickly evaluates the two options: (1) tell the truth and face the punishment or (2) lie and see if you can extricate yourself from the issue. Being the youngest of five kids, I attempted to get out of punishment on many occasions by blaming my siblings, but I was not the best of liars, as, according to my father, he could always tell when I was lying. I would stutter or gaze into the sky as if waiting for the explanation I needed to mysteriously appear out of the blue and render me blameless.

In court, you are required to stand and swear to “tell the truth, the whole truth, so help me God.” But is honesty always the best policy? And don’t we sometimes stretch the truth? I would be lying again if I said otherwise.

For instance, a lot of people say hurtful things and then try to excuse it by claiming they are just being honest or “keeping it real.” I believe that if I can spare someone’s self-esteem by withholding a comment or stretching the truth for that purpose, then I will. We are placed on this earth to uplift our fellow men/women and not step on them like ants, oblivious to their existence.

It is often reported that divorce is caused primarily by financial difficulty and/or lack of effective communication. However, I submit that neither finances nor ineffective communication is the primary factor in marital breakups, but the inability or unwillingness to regularly encourage and uplift your spouse is. Since we all crave and desire acceptance, we should know how crucial it is to offer consistent encouragement and motivation to those we love. But what invariably happens, unfortunately, is that discussions sometimes turn into arguments and then into screaming matches, fueled by insults and accompanied by the throwing of objects across the room. If you cannot be transparent with your boo, friend, mate, or spouse, then whom can you be truthful with? But this does not mean that you take every opportunity to criticize your better half for the sake of being honest.

Sometimes, you must be brutally honest because lying can be detrimental to the other person’s survival. On the television show Intervention, you might see a person hooked on alcohol or drugs and ruining their lives—often their family’s lives as well. The family may be codependent out of their love for the individual, but there comes a time when they must initiate tough love and honesty—two essentials to recovery. In such a case, the family coordinates with experts in the field of addiction to have a sit-down with this person and allow him or her to confront firsthand the pain they have been causing. The show is designed to draw empathy for the addicted individual as well as for their family. It is not easy to tell your loved one that they are killing themselves and that you are no longer going to be a part of their lives unless they seek help. It is crucial for the family to stay the course—even if the addict decides to continue along their destructive path.

I had a close friend who battled alcoholism. He was my road dog, my boy who always had my back, no matter the situation. We met while going through a management training program after college, and we clicked like hard taps on a shoe. Being the superstar of the training program, he quickly moved up in the company. Like most people, he was a casual, social drinker. Then the perfect storm of events happened that led him to seek refuge in alcohol. In rapid succession, he lost his job, his wife, and his home. As a hardworking man, losing his job was bad enough, but getting a divorce crushed him, even though his wife was an overly critical and negative woman who had slowly eaten away his confident and outgoing demeanor.

At first, I attempted to discourage his excessive drinking. “It will all work out and you will be back on top,” I said. I considered the drinking to be a temporary setback that he would overcome, like every other obstacle in his life. But the drinking got worse, and he eventually received his first DUI. You would think that this might have slowed his momentum, but he swatted it off like a curious fly. After a while, his family became hesitant to invite him to family gatherings, as he would drink heavily and get combative and loud. Kindness and love were useless with him as the alcohol-induced rage made him impossible to contain. One DUI followed another, and then a third. His drinking got so bad that his family preferred that he be locked up in a county jail where they would know where he was so he could sober up. An intervention was convened with little impact and all efforts to get him into a rehabilitation facility failed, as he had the escape artist skills of a Harry Houdini. His story ended on a tragic note as his over-consumption of alcohol led to cirrhosis of the liver, which slowly destroyed all that he was.

“Don’t hate the addict, hate the disease.
Don’t hate the person, hate the behavior. If it is hard to
watch it, imagine how hard it must be to live it.”
—Anonymous

Though I have never been addicted to alcohol or drugs, I can easily understand how someone might be. When I was a teenager, my crew and I started out slowly drinking “California Coolers,” which evolved into drinking regular beer. Then we went big time, and we were hitting forty-ounce Olde English “8 Balls” like water from a faucet. Those were great times, and they had me doing crazy things. There is no way my older bladder could handle that level of abuse now. And we did not stop there. One of the guys I grew up with, my brother and good friend “Big C,” may he rest in peace, had an older cousin who introduced us to cannabis, aka marijuana or weed. The cannabis evolved into cannabis laced with cocaine, or what they would call “primos.”

After high school, I worked as a shoe salesman, which was challenging. I had not realized selling shoes to women would be so stressful. On Fridays, some work friends and I would need to decompress. On one of those Fridays, I was invited to a house party hosted by one of my coworkers who was Latino. The party was like nothing I had ever experienced. When the host suggested I follow him into another room in the house, without hesitation I took what he laid before me.

After snorting a few lines of cocaine, although I did not know how to salsa, I was moving like a professional salsa dancer. Feeling invincible by then, I quickly became the life of the party. But the next morning, I came down hard; my body was not used to the cocaine and the volume of alcohol I had consumed, and I could see myself becoming addicted to that type of high. Although I wanted to believe that I didn’t need cocaine to have a good time, I did snort it more than a few times after that—whenever we got together and partied. I was lying to myself that it was just fun and that it was having no impact on my life.

I believe that my history of lying to myself contributed to my growing cocaine habit, as I was convinced it would help me “find myself.” Whenever I used the drug, I felt I could be my authentic self and no longer needed to hide and lie. Although cocaine gave me a fake sense of bravado and confidence, those “feel-good” moments of invincibility lasted only until the next day, when I would fight to recover from the night before. I never once thought of myself as an addict; I thought, since I never bought the drug, how could I be addicted to it?

It seemed nothing was going right in my life, and this was the one thing that made me feel better, even if only for that fleeting instant. During this low and dark period in my life, my personality changed. Normally calm with a positive outlook, I was becoming easily irritated by the slightest comment about my behavior. Also, I was lying more than ever to family and friends who had known me all my life. I continued down this path for about a year, until completing an International Transportation Certificate program. When I was hired shortly thereafter by an import/export company, my time as a women’s shoe salesman ended anticlimactically—and simultaneously, so did my cocaine use. I never snorted cocaine again.

No one forced me to do anything; I chose to do it. As my father used to tell me, “Be a leader, not a follower.” This message came back to me in a compelling way as I arrived at a crossroads with my recreational drug use. One day, back in the late eighties, when the highly addictive crack cocaine was starting to flood the city, I was at an unknown location with some friends and had to make a life-changing decision. A guy standing over a stove proceeded to ask those of us in attendance if we wanted to try something to make us feel amazing. I was nervous and knew in my gut that whatever it was, it was not for me. The setting was dark, as unfamiliar faces paced about me, and others were in a corner turning up their forties like it was their last. I had to decide whether to stay and try what was being cooked over the stove or leave. Something inside me said, Go! I now know it was the Holy Spirit urging me to get out and it was by the grace of God I departed and never went back. In hindsight, I am thankful for these experiences and that I am alive to talk about it, as it has given...