Truth

I am a horrible liar.  Absolutely the worst.  I have all the tells - giving too much detail and then contradicting myself, fidgeting, stammering, looking into the upper corners of my field of vision, inability to answer simple questions.  It's a good thing I don't play poker.  How I ever got away with the enormity and duration of the lie I perpetrated is completely beyond me.

And that worries me.  I don't want to be a good liar.  I don't want to be a liar at all.  It is a bad habit, one that quickly gets easier with practice.  We've all known people who actually lose track of what is actually true vs. what they made up or want to believe.  That is not the person I want to be.  These are not the values I want to teach my children.

DB and I have been talking about this a lot lately.  He also feels haunted by this loss of integrity, not because of anyone else's opinion of what he has done, but because of his own opinion of himself. We are also hyper-aware that if we cannot be absolutely honest with each other, we will not last.  Truth is vital.

In my religious tradition (Reform Judaism), people are deemed to have a "good impulse" and a "bad impulse," and we always have a choice about which impulse to follow.  The more frequently you do good things, the easier it becomes to do more good things, and that is why we view someone as a "good" person.  It's not that the person has no negative thoughts or desires and never does anything wrong, but rather that he or she is good at recognizing and choosing the higher road most of the time.  The opposite is also true, so when we do bad things, repeatedly, it becomes harder to resist the parts of ourselves that are selfish and petty and greedy and lazy.  The good news is that we can always turn it around, but it takes work.

I want to turn it around.  I am making a conscious effort every day to be honest, to take responsibility for what I say and rebuild my integrity.  Every time I find myself tempted to "spin" the truth, I stop and ask myself why.  Of course, diplomacy and tact are still important, but never at the expense of trust and integrity.

If you're considering having an affair, or involved in an affair, I encourage you to ask yourself whether this is the kind of person you want to be.  Eventually, if you lie enough, you become a liar.  It's hard to come back from that, and painful and ugly to confront.  A little honesty now could save you a lot of trouble down the road.  That's the truth.