The Anatomy of Untruth

Perhaps the complexity of living out a lie can be most comically illustrated in the film "Waking Ned Devine." It's a delightful, if slightly naughty film about an entire Irish village that conspires to conceal the death of one of its residents in order to claim from the national lottery authority his winnings in the lotto. It's hilarious and nail-biting at the same time, and while we certainly root for the main characters, we realize after the end of the movie just how difficult, if not implausible, such duplicity would be in real life.

While there are admittedly many species of lies, classified primarily by their most visible effects, all of them are composed essentially of the same element: the alteration of the truth. Some lies are a slight distortion of reality while others basically throw it out the window. Some of them are one-time deals while others need to be carefully and painstakingly perpetuated, and it is this that I feel the need to discuss.

One-time lies are easy to churn out and forget, but the funny thing is that they are, in the long-run, actually very uncommon, because once a lie gets out there, it has a tendency to come back and bite its source on the butt. This may only occur once or twice, or many times in one's lifetime.

The mother of all lies, though, is the one that requires perpetuation, because too often it demands an almost slavish dedication to consistency and a willingness to structure one's waking reality around that lie. What if one cannot? What happens to the lie then, white lie or otherwise? It collapses under the weight of its own inconsistencies.

...and yet, so many people out there, some of whom I know, would prefer to take their chances with building up a lie that will eventually come crashing down on their heads than deal with the truth.