Finding the Truth

I have been wondering recently - which is worse? To tell a lie by omission or commission? I guess one actively involves lying and the other just involves not speaking up; nothing active about it - you just 'forget' to mention one fact or the other. One involves a decision to not be forthright and the other involves a decision to deceive. And you may think that being actively engaged in untruth is worse, but I am not so sure. Even being passive has its consequences.

I am sure people will agree with me. It is not fun to be lied to, even less so when the truth finally comes to light (and doesn't it always?). And even if you get away with something, even if the lie you told ages ago never gets discovered and no one else is the wiser for it, you know. Unless you are so good at the deception game, you start to convince yourself that the lies you have told are really the truth. It is amazing how we can placate ourselves and others with falsehoods. Like little rubies and pearls that drop from our lips; we let them fall, thinking them treasures. but really, it is nothing more that viperous toads and snakes - poisoned words from a poisoned heart. No one likes being lied to, yet it seems the ones we lie to are the ones we are most likely to hurt, the ones we love the most, and the ones we should be most honest with.

So sometimes, we paint a half complete picture. Instead of marring the canvas with falsehoods and lies, we choose to only let someone have a glimpse of things. We decide what is relevant, what should be known, and we say it all. Ahhh, to hide behind the trappings of honesty and shield ourselves from scrutiny with half-remembered truth. To me, it is telling a joke without the punchline: somehow incomplete and pointless, full of misdirection. It is not less dishonest than telling someone what they want to hear or you want them to know, expect now one can hide behind a sly smile. How hard and black the heart must be that always shields itself behind half-truths, that never knows to let anyone see them completely. That knows itself like no one else knows it.

Perhaps 'honesty is the best policy' and 'the truth will set you free' and the many other platitudes we express to indicate that we do not condone lying, in any form. But life is not a string of platitudes; life is a series of lies. We lie to our friends, our family, our lovers, and ourselves; and in return, they trade in lies too. They tell us what we long to hear, want to hear, need to hear. They fill the silence with their lies, screaming to be heard. And what little honesty we share, gets wrapped in lies of gossamer gold - deceiving all in its appearance.

Letter to Someone Lost

To the person whom I do not recognize anymore:

I am watching you from an inseparable distance and watching you change and shift in so many ways. Sometimes I think that I am imagining these changes; that in a moment, my eyes will flutter and you will be standing before me, the same person I always knew. But the moment passes and the deception dies.

I grow sick in my heart seeing the person you're becoming. Everything you said you stood for, everything you seemed to believe is gone. I miss that person; I wish I could say I miss you, but perhaps all these changes is you becoming the person you were meant to be.

It seemed that when I knew you, you were so solid: unchanging, never-ending, strong. But this person I am confronted by now bears no resemblance; there is nothing to grasp and you fade away, slipping through my fingers like wisps of smoke or rivulets of sand and then you are gone.

I wish I could tell you that I will remain here, unbroken by time and distance, the same person you knew as well. But I am changing too. I am no longer just watching you become what you are; I am doing what I must to withstand the tempest that is your life, that link that still stretches between us - feint, weak, tenuous, but still there. And as we grow, we shape and mold ourselves into the people we best believe will make us happy.

I hope that what you reach for does not elude you: the happiness you seek, the happiness you think you can find and could never find in me. I hope that all the sacrifices you make and all the things you let drop from you are worth it all in the end. I hope that when you are done with this, you still recognize yourself; that you can look yourself in the eyes and see traces of the person you once were, the person worth more than a disdainful thought and a few passing lines of derision laced with sorrow.

I will never see you again for the person you were, only the person you've become. I wish I could hang on to some semblance of the past and take it with me into the future, but you can not hang on to what no longer exists, what may never have been in the first place. I push myself further away from all that I held dear in you and hope that distance will give me perspective, knowing that separation brings me peace.

I will keen for many things: I will lament for what you were. But I will never mourn the person you've become. You have your reasons, I have mine. And though I may not recognize you, beneath the glimmer, glitter, gilt, and grime, you are more transparent than you think possible. You are as plain to me as you have always been. And all that I do not recognize in you is now everything I saw before and lacked acknowledgment of. You are nothing more than you have always been....