#VoxPopuli | Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
by Thandie Aliño
Maintaining healthy family, work, and romantic relationships can be challenging in today’s world, and there are many aspects of our interactions with others that we need to worry about. In your opinion, is it sometimes better to hide the truth to others to maintain a healthy relationship? How, then, can we balance communicating truth and maintaining harmonious relationships?
When you’re little, cliches are a dime a dozen. Every aspect of life is simplified in a saying or a proverb grown-ups tell you to make sure you’re a good kid. Of all of them, truth comes with the weightiest phrases: honesty is the best policy, lying is a sin, the truth will set you free. What no one tells you when you’re a little kid is that these black-and-white notions will be dismantled as you grow up and that there will be a tacit agreement among you and your loved ones that when it comes to keeping the peace in relationships, shades of gray are best observed.
I was taught different from the start; there were no definite rules, only several contradicting values for me to choose from. My mom, who wanted to be my bosom buddy, told me to tell her anything and everything about school, life, crushes, how I was feeling, how my day was, what I wanted to do in the future. She was an open book and wanted me to be the same. But I also learned the concept of the white lie from her. I first heard the term when an unprecedented lack of preparedness on my part for something important compelled her to call in sick for me. Telling the truth would have shook up worlds, for this was the only time I had been unprepared for this school activity and I’d garnered a reputation of being one of the best at it. Although her usage of the term is a little flawed in regards to its actual meaning, it doesn’t change that I’d only ever known lying to be bad, period. To put it simply, hearing her say that white lies are sometimes okay — necessary even — changed my worldview on truth. From that day on, withholding truth to keep the peace became a valid option.
The revelation that people and relationships and situations are more complex than you think is what defines the process of growing up. Realizing that everyone is balancing so many things on their plate that the utterance of a simple truth could crumble their whole world is perhaps the saddest part of emerging adulthood. I grew to understand this too, especially as I realized things about myself I knew would shatter my parents’ world. I grew to accept that sometimes, hiding the truth would be the only thing that would keep the peace in my relationships.
But like I said, these things aren’t always black-and-white. Because even if there isn’t a spectrum to truth, as I learned from my mom that day, there’s a spectrum to lying. White lies don’t necessarily have to ruin relationships, especially because the foundation of these kinds of lies is that they’re good in intention and are meant to mostly benefit the other party. Maybe your partner is presenting you a dress that they adore, proclaiming it their pick for an important gala. You hate this dress, but they can’t wait to wear it. What else can you say?
Lies with a capital L, however, are heavier. I firmly believe you can maintain a healthy relationship even when lying once in a while in order to not hurt the other person’s feelings, but these kinds of lies make or break relationships. Lying about cheating, lying about the foundations of your relationship, lying about important parts of yourself — determination to keep the peace may lead us to continuing these facades, but ultimately, there will only be pain left after the dust from an inevitable fallout settles. These lies are selfish in essence. In these cases, I find that hiding the truth is the opposite of a healthy relationship.
So then have I answered the almighty prompt that motivated this essay? I seem to have answered that sometimes hiding the truth is necessary in relationships, but really I only presented it as a means to keep the peace and as something that can be overlooked when the transgression is small enough. I seem to have answered that communicating truth is important, but sometimes lying is necessary for harmony. I still agree with this, but I feel it only scratches the surface of the matter.
The whole time I’ve been thinking about this prompt and realizing that even though I have answers formulated for it, I cannot help but think its very foundation holds fault. Truly healthy relationships are never results of hiding the truth. Even “harmless” lies such as white lies are not the things that sow the harmony in relationships — rather, it is trust, faith, truth. Communicating truth and maintaining harmonious relationships are not two things that we must balance between as if they are the opposite of each other. In fact, they are the two things that must go hand-in-hand if you are to experience a truly happy and healthy relationship. The harmony we sow from withholding the truth is temporary and its root unreal.
I know that relationships may be fragile and work-life balance may be unsteady. I know that today’s world is so hard to maintain that the simple utterance of truth can turn it upside down. I also know that shattering a world does not necessarily have to be a bad thing — you could be building something better by doing it.
When I withheld the truth about parts of myself to my parents, I did it out of safety and necessity. I wasn’t wrong to “lie.” But the harmony I was trying to maintain was precarious, because it was based on their happiness that I wasn’t what they were hoping me not to be. So when I came out and told the truth, it shattered their world, but it built a new bridge and a new understanding between us that wouldn’t have emerged if my only aim my whole life was just to keep the peace.
I think we all know deep down what the protocol for lies are in relationships. But what we need to relearn from our childhood may be something that actually turned out to be right the whole time: the truth will set you free.
*This was the winning essay for this school year’s Grade 10 Humanities Festival Essay Writing Contest.
