I have always been fascinated by the concept of lying. Specifically, it is amazing to me how often we lie, and how little reason we need to do it. I’m not talking about the culturally approved lies that everybody tells their children; about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. I’m not even talking about those little white lies that we tell out of self-defense. I get that there is no safe answer to questions like: “Do these pants make me look fat?” “Do you think she is prettier than me?” Or, “What do you think about this haircut?”
I’m referring to lies that are just part of our daily lives, stories that we tell other people without even thinking about them. If someone asks what I did this weekend, I might tell them, “nothing.” The truth is, I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t just lie down on the floor and go catatonic for two days. Probably, what actually happened was too boring or embarrassing, so I lie and say that I did absolutely nothing rather than admit that I twisted my ankle while standing on a rock trying to see the neighbor sunbathing topless in her backyard. Even if that would actually make a better story, it makes me sound stupid and creepy and I’m better off saving it to tell later when I’m drunk and trading stories with strangers.
Other lies are more direct. To impress a girl, I once said that I could bench press three hundred pounds. It wasn’t exactly a lie, it just would have been more correct to say that I could bench press fifty pounds, six times. It’s all about perspective.
But what I’m really getting at today, is the lies that everyone tells themselves at the beginning of each new year. Yes, I’m talking about the New Year’s Resolution. Every December 31st, we tell ourselves that we are going to eat better, work out more, lose some weight, etc. But does it ever really happen? I’m doubtful. Maybe, on occasion, someone actually sticks to a resolution, but people also get killed by meteors. I’m not taking odds on that bet either.
Over the past few years, I resolved to go to the gym and work out. Typically, in January, I go to the gym and end up driving around the parking lot for half an hour, looking for a parking space that doesn’t exist because everybody else has decided to the exact same thing at the exact same time. My resolution generally ends with me never getting out of the car, swearing profusely at a lot of people I have never met (and now never will since they are all inside the gym working out), then stopping at Jack in the Box on my way home.
If I make it as far as January 15th before giving up, I consider it to have been a pretty good run.
And I guarantee I am not the only person still making these resolutions with the full knowledge that I will never follow through on any of them.
For example, every December my wife decides that she is going to do whatever it takes to be a happier person. She is going to remove the things in her life that are toxic or make her miserable, and not let negative people get her down.
And … I’m still here.
Why do we lie to ourselves? I honestly don’t know. Maybe we need them to feel better about ourselves. It would be a rather depressing start to every January 1st if I resolved that this year my life will be just as crappy, and I will suck just as hard as I did last year. Or if I told myself, this year I will get older, gain some more weight, and work a little harder on giving myself terminal liver failure. They might be easier to stick to, but resolutions like that might just convince someone to try playing a solo game of Russian roulette with a fully loaded revolver. Not a desirable outcome.
So, maybe these lies are actually necessary. After all, it is little white lies that hold the fabric of civil society together. It is sometimes more polite to lie to a stranger than to tell someone a truth that is painful. Perhaps lying to ourselves is just as important to holding together our own personal fabric. If that is the case, then for 2018 I resolve to be a better father and husband, and to be kinder to my family.
(Damn, I almost got through typing that entire sentence with a straight face. Maybe I should just resolve to be a better liar.)
In closing, despite the prevalence of lies in the world around us, I just want to let the readers of Deep Dark Thoughts know that when you read these pages, you can always trust what I tell you will be the absolute truth. I will never lie to you.
And now I’m off to the gym to bench press three hundred pounds.
Happy New Year.