What Gets Done in the Dark
Lies are a part of everyday discourse for every person willing to be authentic with themselves. Everyone lies. There are varying degrees of lies, some egregious and some miniscule. They are the tiny pieces of fabric inside the pocket for some, and the entire wardrobe for others. This is a fact of life as an adult. I don’t really care to mince words about my intent, I have no reason to lie about about 99 percent of my life…so I don’t. The other stuff is miniscule. It’s an opinion that would severely hurt or wound where encouragment is healthier. It’s the “go right ahead” where I wanted to say “please don’t.” I’m not immune to lying, that’s what I’m getting at.
I would like to take a few thoughts and hopefully spark some minds on this topic, however. How often do you find yourself being inauthentic with someone? Does that make you feel any type of guilt? When should someone feel guilty about telling a lie, small or large?
I am a Dad. Sometimes, as a parent, you tell your kids lies. This is not to say that you intentionally mislead your children for a malicious purpose (though I am sure that some people do, for whatever reason), but that there are some truths that your kids are not quite ready to hear. When being too truthful with those who are not properly equipped to handle it, you run the risk of causing them harm. I learned this with my oldest, speaking about my divorce. In one of the early months, maybe the second month of visitation, before any semblance of regularity had come forward…she asked me when I was coming home. I stopped for a moment, crouched down to eye level with her and said: “This is my home now. It’s your home too. This house and your Mom’s house are your home.”
Whoops. This triggered a meltdown. Tears, snot, half-sentences punctuated by sharp inward breaths. I had messed up somewhere. But this was brief, and over quickly. The information was a bit too sharp and a bit too new. Lesson learned. Or so I thought. One night, after putting my children to bed, I stepped away from the room to speak with my brother. Maybe 10 minutes pass and I hear a door swing open violently. My oldest is out of bed and crying. She’s upset that I’ve gone, scared that I had left and would not return. I get her back to bed and have a short talk with her about why she was scared.
She says to me: “Dad, I want you to come back to the apartment with us. That’s your home, not here. You don’t need to leave us. We love you. Don’t you love us?”
Absolutely one hundred percent heart-rending pain. Of course I love my children. There’s not a single part of me that doesn’t love their two little lives. I am their father and proud to be their father. This cut me deep. I realized that I had not taken the time to explain what was happening in her life. This, in addition to other life changes (new school, new responsibility), made everything seem like a terrifying change. By not explaining the why behind what was happening…I had lied by omission. She thought the truth was that I had stopped loving my family, and simply left. She is a child and did not know any other way of thinking about it. My own oversight had led to that.
The next question she asked me, after I reassured her that I was never ever going anywhere that took me away from my children was: “Do you still love Mom?”
Without hesitation, I lied.
“Yes I do.”
She would not have understood the truth in that instance. It would take much longer than one night to explain that concept to her. She was already feeling fragile about the whole situation. So I lied. I told her that I still loved her mother. The truth was that I wished nothing more than to never see her mother again. The amount of disdain I’ve had for a person has never been higher. All the same, my daughter came from this person, so to tell her that I did not love her mother is tantamount to telling her that I didn’t love part of her. We have since had much richer conversation about this topic, and she can certainly grasp the concept that I was very much in love with her mother at the time she was being carried and born even if I don’t love her any longer. This is a welcome addition to my life, because lying to her beyond that moment would have been incredibly difficult on us both.
Still, I think to myself: what if I’m rationalizing the lie? I misled my daughter to pacify her emotions. This is a person I care about more than anyone else in the world (tied of course with her sister). Doesn’t that mean that anyone on comparatively lesser standing could receive more lies? How often am I pacifying the emotions of others when the truth is probably more of an immediate need for them?
One conversation in a dimly lit room, mid-summer…I think about it often because it was the impetus for a wholesale change in my behavior. It felt wrong to have lied to her. I felt like I had been doing that more and more to pacify those around me. This had to change. Eventually I had built up enough courage to say what I felt when I felt it, tactfully of course, but also forcefully when necessary. I greatly appreciate this moment, in hindsight, because it has allowed me to become more of a well-adjusted person. That’s the end goal of my parenting, too.
I’ll end on this note; lying to people is no noble effort. It serves a purpose like any other form of communication, but has no value overall unless you are willing to examine the lie, the purpose, and learn from it. I have my own version of the “What’s Done in the Dark” story above.
What is yours?
