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I LIE
Ream Odetallah
Class of 2003, University of Jordan
MA English Language and Literature
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What is easier? Telling the truth or lying? Why do we lie? What really makes us lie? Well, we lie because people
judge us or criticize us for the truth we usually say. Lying is a shelter from pain, scandals, chaos and
disappointments. But that is all wrong!
When someone is honest, then that someone has confidence and is ready to shoot back at anyone who plans
to negatively affect the honest speaker. As a matter of fact, honesty requires a lot of guts and nerves nowadays,
simply because life is no longer as easy as how it was long ago. For example, do you lie about your salary?
Origin? Ethnicity? Achievement(s)? Social life? Love story? Job position? Naturally, people lie to boast about
their current conditions or deny the facts they are living in or through to impress others or to attract attention,
but the art of lying once adopted it would be hard to end it because it becomes a disease or a habit of an
everyday life.
On the other hand, many communities do not help people to say the truth or become contented if one lies and
flatters to grab the attention of another. So, lying happens because of the community mainly and secondly, it is
genetic since it runs in a family and a child was raised since infanthood on lying, denying and deceiving.
How to avoid lying? Admit! Acknowledge your mistakes and start all over, so what? Who are the people to
judge you? He is your boss? Your mother? Your husband? You are fixing your life track and that cannot be done
with rules and suppression. It would even be better if you can move out from the environment you are already
messed up in, but if that's impossible just stumble into the streets with confidence as if you were born
yesterday, and time would teach you to forgive yourself and accept your new lifestyle.
As said, honesty is the best policy. It is a rule that one should bear in mind when intending to lie. With time,
your lies would be exposed and you would have to lie again to save yourself, but that would be exhausting and
may cost you your job, marriage and dignity.
Stop lying!
Questions for discussion:
1. What has the author meant by the art of lying?
2. Do you usually lie or tell the truth? Why?
3. How hard is it to tell the truth? Why would it be harder than lying?
4. Write a short story about a lie that affect you.
5. Make up your own proverb about honesty.