Always Tell The Truth?
Always tell the truth. How many times have you heard that? Come on, admit it…your Mom drilled that into you from the time you could understand anything more complex than a full diaper.
“Always tell the truth because then you don’t have to try to remember which lie you told to whom.” “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” “You can’t HANDLE the truth!” It all seems so simple, doesn’t it? Tell the truth. There’s merit to this, as there is in most of what your Mom taught you, but it’s probably more accurate and actionable to remember this the other way she taught it: “don’t tell a lie.”
Turns out, the world is a little less blackandwhite and a little too grey to hew quite so closely to Mom’s truth dictum. At least when it comes to something very personal for some other person. Remember the Jim Carey movie “Liar, Liar”? Sometimes the truth is really rather painful, and telling it might be more than just a bit cruel. Especially if you don’t HAVE to tell it, when you can allow kindness to trump a truth that doesn’t need to be played.
Like, “Do these pants make me look fat?”
QED.
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