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Dear James,
I grew up in a household full of love and care—but also of elephants in the living room and eggshells I had to walk around so as not to ruffle a single feather. My parents are extremely sensitive and horrible listeners, so you can imagine how I coped: I lied. A lot. I lied to get away with things, but mostly I lied so that I wouldn’t upset anyone or get into trouble.
This has stayed with me my entire life. Even though I don’t lie as much anymore, I often catch myself wanting to so that I don’t have to deal with any aftermath. I’ve hardly ever been caught or reprimanded, which makes it all so easy. Too easy.
I’m writing because I want to stop. I want to tell the truth no matter the consequence—to cease relying on lies to get out of a commitment, or when I feel like I should offer a “better” reason for a choice I have made or might want to make. Any ideas for how to retrain my brain after a lifetime of this habit?
Dear Reader,
The mixing of the metaphors—the elephants and the eggshells—in your first sentence is very good indeed, sort of Seussian or Lewis Carroll–y. Which is how it feels to be in those situations, isn’t it, in those rooms that are carpeted with how-are-they-not-broken eggs, while unmentioned elephants browse in the corners or loom behind the couch: You feel like you’re in a nonsense poem, at the mercy of a meaningless and arbitrary order.
My family wasn’t like that, thank God, but I do know those rooms and those feelings. So I, too, over the course of my 57 years, have been an intermittent yes-man, over-promiser, white liar, soft-soaper, eggshell-walker, aggro-avoider. Viewed from an especially merciless or purgatorial angle, certain strands of my life are little more than histories of lo-fi mendacity. I think that many people are like this.
What to do about it? The training of a lifetime is hard to reverse. To shift the metaphor, you need to take a lot of boxing classes before throwing a clean punch becomes your first reaction and not your 15th. How to be ready, in the moment, to not lapse into the dream, the spell, of the untrue or (worse) the half-true? How to stay alert?
Regular readers will know that I like quoting the Jesuits: Agere contra. Act against. Or, as George Costanza says in an especially useful episode of Seinfeld, “I will do the opposite.” If your instinct, in other words, is to smooth things over with a bland fabrication, try dropping a tiny truth bomb instead. This, too, is an instinct, a deeper one, and it can be developed. You can work on it. See how good the truth feels—how it sharpens the atmosphere, improves the circulation, widens the eyes of the person you’re speaking with.
Simply being present—to the situation, to your own real responses—can fix so much. If you don’t understand something, say so. If something’s bothering you, say so. If you love something, say so. Start small. Experiment with higher levels of honesty in texts and emails. Experiment with saying what you mean. You’ll be amazed at how quickly and gladly the world snaps into focus for you.
Bloating steadily with self-scrutiny,
James
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