I just realized something??? not only are most people not very good at telling the truth (i.e., they’re too uncomfortable with being completely honest), but they’re not very good at lying, either! I personally believe that honesty is (almost) always the best policy, but that there are times when it’s better to utter a falsehood. There are obvious cases where lying can be considered to be the right thing to, like if a creepy stranger were to corner you, asking for your phone number or something and won’t take no for an answer, and no one is around to help you out of that situation. But most people lie because it’s more convenient than to explain oneself truthfully without being misinterpreted. The problem with that is the proverbial snowball or tangled web. The key to lying succesfully is to make sure that any claims or assumptions made at the time of lying are unverifiable afterwards, so you don’t have to constantly keep them under cover. So, even if making up a fib on the spot is still a bad idea, a lie that’s well-thought out ahead of time can be a lot better than spilling the beans. And if you can’t do that, then learn to always tell the truth.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

- Mark Twain

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 11th, 2000 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.