Seeing Thing As They Really Are

The Devastating Truth of Dishonesty So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower I recently experienced direct, in-my-face, deception. This was not one of my grandchildren trying to hide a mistake, someone’s exaggerated fishing story, or an insincere compliment. When I finally recognized it, it took my breath away. How far will we go to get what we want? The reality is that we’ve become comfortable with dishonesty. We expect it in advertising, the stories we are told, news headlines, political speeches, and social media. We’ve come to accept “white lies,” exaggeration, and hyperbole, as fully acceptable to avoid confrontation, hurt feelings, or resistance. We move fluidly through half-truths to maintain the peace, justify our decisions, or move people to adopt our views. On the other side, we often know it is happening, and allow, or even choose to believe. We say we want the truth but we prefer that it align with our desires and are quite content to allow ourselves to be deceived when it suits our purposes. Sure, we’ll later claim moral outrage as we disingenuously criticize our deceiver but the truth is: we willfully let it happen. What about when it really counts? You know, the kind of deception that costs money or really hurts other people? How about the kind of dishonesty that manipulates or seeks to take advantage? The seriousness of a falsehood lives upon a continuum with the acceptable white lies on one end and the really nasty, hurtful, deceits skulking at the other end. We naturally intuit the spectrum and most of us live within an “honor code” of our deceptive ways. How we perpetrate a deception also matters. For example, deceiving through omission is far more acceptable than a bold-faced lie. We rationalize lies of omission as fair game in the self-justified hypocrisy of “wordsmithing” or “splitting hairs” over how explicitly intention was captured in the contract or promise. Even though we might have known what the other intended, we’ll let the deception roll along because the correct word wasn’t used, or, we’ll avoid seeking clarification. Caught in such deceptions, we’ll frequently double-down by claiming misunderstanding, an “honest” mistake, or even more boldly, the disingenuous criticism of accusing the other of not being “clear” in their intentions. Have we become so jaded that we barely notice? Such perpetual dishonesty is a cancer of the soul. It eats away at our moral fabric and undermines even our best intentions as the good we do is stained with falsehood. Are we allowing it? Are we foisting it upon those around us? As They Really Are Wisdom is seeing things as they really are. Pope Benedict XVI We may have become comfortable with deception but we still recognize it as hurtful, particularly when we’re on the receiving end. But we often allow ourselves to be deceived. Why is that? Desire. The truth is that we really want certain things to happen and deception occurs on both sides of our desires. In the midst of our desires, we often struggle to see things as they really are. A friend recently opened a blog post by writing, “Hope is not a strategy.” Actually, it is. To rest on hope alone is to surrender responsibility and submit oneself to fate. We do it all the time. We hope we are accepted. We hope we are chosen. We hope “things work out.” We hope the other is telling us the truth. Don’t misunderstand, I’m a big believer in hope. It is critical to happiness and our ability to continu