On Missing The Mark - Lying

With the changes that have occurred in my life over the last 6 months or so, God has been continually dragging me back to things in my life that need dealing with.  In some cases these are things which have been embedded in my life for decades - it turns out that between commuting and hours on Produce (A)Isle, one has a lot of time to think and be in confrontation with one's self.

The past month has been about an ingrained habit of "white" lies.

I say "white" lies.  There really is no difference.  There are just lies.

The issue has become apparent twice in the past month, in both cases around something that had literally no impact on my life.  But it is was almost instinctive, the slight shading of truth - not harmful, not bad, not anything that really mattered.

But bad.

Both after the first and now second times that it happened, I have been delving into my reaction: How long have I been doing this?  Why do I feel the need, especially if it is over things that really do not matter?  How do I reconcile this with the self image I actually believe myself to be, or at least try to hold to?

There are, I suspect, a lot of roads that led here.  Part of it is being an introvert that reacts badly to interacting with people, let alone not dealing at all well with confrontation.  Part of it is the social play that we all end up being a part of, the "greasing" that makes things run smoothly.  Part of it is simply character related failings on my part.  And part of it...part of it is simply that panicked feeling that one gets when a question comes up from the blue and feels one has to react rather than think for a second and then answer. 

All of this, of course, leads to the "white" lie, the answer slightly shifted, the question slightly redirected, the truth slightly hazed.

This, of course, does not even cover the lies I tell to myself.  Those, at least, are pretty straightforward:  excuses I make to myself for undesirable behaviors.  "Laziness" and "Overeating" cleverly disguised as "Sure, you are tired" and "I am choosing to do this because I am empowered to eat entire sleeve cookies because I am an adult".

The rest, of course, is much less benign.

Oddly enough, I claim that I value truth.  I work in an industry where truth is 100% needed.  So why is it that I have allowed this slight tarnishing of my character, this somehow allowable (and, to be noted, largely socially acceptable) blemish?  Like other things of this nature, I suspect it simply becomes a habit - and once a thing is a habit, it becomes incredibly difficult to walk back. The mind becomes oiled and grooved into a particular set of actions - the best example of this, of course, is the common "What is wrong?" followed by the immediate response "Nothing" - when both party know something is wrong.

We - or at least I - should always be examples of the things we espouse to the greatest degree we can - not just because it is good to be an example, but simply because it is the right thing to do.  And I, at least, should hold myself to the standard I expect of others.

Like any bad thing, it is a habit.  And like a habit, it can be broken.  And like any old habit, it simply will take a very long time and a great deal more effort than one would have thought necessary.  But at least in the end, I can sleep at night knowing I held to my honesty in all things, not just in the "really important" ones.