Lying

If you tell somebody that you are going to do something and you don’t do it, is that lying? Is lying only when you look someone in the eye and tell them that “I did (or didn’t) do it” when you know the opposite is true? How about when we tell a friend that we will meet them someplace for lunch and then we don’t show up, did we lie to our friend? If we just show up late after saying we would be somewhere at a certain time, is that lying? Is it still lying if we are late but we have really good excuse? What if we have a really good reason for not doing what we said we would, does the reason make the lie not a lie? Are there degrees of lying or truth or “truthyness”? Does intent count? I mean if we intended to do something and then just simply forgot, or had a good excuse or “something came up”, does that make our commitment to another to be somewhere or to do something not a lie or is it just a more “acceptable” lie? If we make an appointment with an accountant, doctor, attorney, or hairdresser and we don’t show up or show up late, did we lie when we said we would be there at a certain time? What if the doctor is not there or late for your appointment, did he lie? When we say we will exercise, eat fresh fruits and vegetables daily, get to bed earlier, not smoke, not drink, or not watch as much TV and then we do these things anyhow, is this lying to ourselves? When our lies inconvenience, hurt, disrespect only ourselves, is that more acceptable than if we do this to others? How “good” is our word? When we say something, can we be counted on to do what we say we will do? Can we count on ourselves to tell ourselves the truth? Does not showing up, being late, and having a really good excuse, having good intentions, take the place of the truth, of being honest, of having integrity? Does “kings X”, “I had my fingers crossed”, “I really meant to be there”, excuse us from the fact that we lied?

In other words, is the truth a fluid thing …., or does our word, our promise, our commitment to do something, be somewhere, be on time, mean something, even in the small things? Can we say, truthfully, that we have “integrity” or that we are “honest”? Is “lying” too strong and how can it be anything else but lying?

Personally, I think lying is lying, period, no matter what our intentions or reasons. Whether it is too ourselves or to others, it is lying and from what I have seen I don’t think that any of us are truthful 100% of the time. Some of us may have good intentions 99% of the time, but we still lie. Acknowledging that we may lie, cleaning up what ever mess or hurt we may cause by lying and striving that much harder to have integrity in all of our relations gives us an access to having a healthier future. Having integrity gives us a say in our future because our words have the power of the truth when spoken and we can create our world with our word, because we said so.