SANTI VILLANUEVA
The fucked up truth
If a violent criminal is looking for an innocent life to torture, and you know where the person is hiding, it’d be more than ok to lie to about the intended victim’s whereabouts. In fact, it’d be a compassionate and heroic act.
I can think of a few other — and rather rare — scenarios where we can wield the power of lies for good.
Lying about one’s abilities in a concentration camp or lying whether you have food hidden away during a famine may be essential for your and your family’s survival. Good lies. Lying to protect innocent lives from death and injustice will forever be a righteous act in my book.
However, rarely do we lie to protect our survival or that of others’. More often than not, we lie to protect our fragile egos, manipulate how others perceive us, and keep our bad habits alive. We misuse the power of lies, the same power that can save lives, to hide from the power of truth — a power that can transform them.
Over the last few months, I’ve been obsessing over a single question: What lies am I telling myself?
The answers have been painful, surprising, and liberating. I’ve changed jobs, deleted apps, deleted friends, played a fuckton of chess, read a fuckton of books, mustered the courage to ask for help, got the help, regained my focus, took back my time, and even lost a few pounds. Most importantly, I rediscovered pieces of myself I thought I’d lost, and found new sources of self-confidence and new levels of self-respect.
These last few months taught me that the quality of your life hinges on your willingness to be honest with yourself, that self-confidence is a result of the promises you keep, and self-respect feeds off the quality of those promises.
Lying to ourselves might create a sense of comfort and security, but a life of self-deception is a life of regret. And that makes me extremely uncomfortable.
What lies are YOU telling yourself?