TELLING LIES

There are two kinds of lessons that go on behind closed doors. Like when daddy wags a finger in your face, ‘Do not lie!’ But tells you to tell the person on the phone that he’s not in. How do we live this life? In truth, we are genuinely afraid of sending children out with too simplistic a view of how the world REALLY works. Not how it works in Walt Disney cartoons. Sometimes, you have to lie.

But when? When you’re miles away and say you’re around the corner? Or you tell your daughter not to tell her father that you gave his new Murano to your younger brother to go quickly and buy fish, but he rammed into a light post, so now you need to panel-beat it before he comes home – just don’t tell daddy, ok? Having become one, I now know that parents are neither all-knowing nor perfect. And, sometimes, they lie because they’re afraid of the consequences of telling the truth. BUT! Not all the time.

If you always insist on evidence that will hold up in a court of Law, then I have to tell you that there’s no real guarantee that being good will save you from bad things. And you know what? You could work very hard and not get noticed, not just for a long time, but EVER. It’s true, to me, you are the best thing that’s happened since the invention of the Yam Pounder, but the rest of the world will not borrow my eyes to look at you. Another thing - you may never find True Love. (Does it even exist?) It’s very likely you would end up with a job you don’t like, and it won’t be ‘just a phase’. I should tell you this - you can’t trust anyone, not even me, to be there for you ALWAYS.

Hard ‘truths’. So, now I can walk with a swagger for being blunt? Honestly, there are days when these things MUST NOT be said. Like when a pimply-faced, self-conscious teenager wants to talk about the future; or if she looks in the mirror and, in that voice that pretends not to care what your answer is, asks if she’s fat; when middle age approaches and the dreams we told you we would achieve by 40 are still dreams; if that young boy, on his way to War, calls at night to ask if you think he’ll come back? What do you say? What you know (stiff finger tapping your temple)? Or what you believe (open palm over your heart)?

We didn’t lie. We just answered the REAL question, the one they didn’t ask; the one hidden within the ones they actually asked. That’s what we do when we hold our children close and whisper, I will always be here for you; speaking faith instead of logic; telling fairytales and winding stories, not always bothering with Pie Charts and PowerPoint Presentations. Because while it is true that a seed is small, it is also true that a seed is big. Life is strange like that, littered with paradoxes. But this, undoubtedly, is the one I find most enchanting – that people rarely become what they do not already believe they are. 

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