Liars.
The next sentence is going to make me sound very naive.But wow, people lie.
From this website (check it if you have time, it's a worthy read)...
We are lied to about 200 times each day.
Most people lie to others once or twice a day and deceive about 30 people per week.
The average is 7 times per hour if you count all the times people lie to themselves.
We lie in 30 to 38% of all our interactions.
College students lie in 50% of conversations with their mothers.
People lie to others once or twice a day. Some of these lies would have been directed at me. How many times have I been lied to this week? This month or this year?
More importantly, which ones were the lies?
When I was really little, I used to lie for no reason. I used to make up stories about lots of things that weren't remotely true, just for the sake of it. I made up aunties and uncles and cousins and pets and what have you. For my first grade composition, I wrote about my "cat". Come over one day and I'll show it to you; it actually got published in our school yearbook. (My school in HK obviously had too much money on its hands but that's another story).
Well anyway, one day, a few months into my first year of primary school, my then-best friend and I were standing outside the school waiting for the bus (this is how well I remember it). Suddenly she turns to me and goes, "I have to tell you something. Sometimes I make up things to make my story sound more interesting, but my mum taught me last night that it was wrong to lie so I'm not going to do it anymore. I just want you to know that what I said before might not have been true, but from now on I'm going to try not to lie".
Seriously, that's what she said (though I'm not sure if you'll believe me given the topic I'm writing about =P). I still remember it today, 15 years later because I'd never had anyone say that to me, ever. Now as I look back, she showed maturity waaayyy beyond her 6 years of life. Even as a 6 year old, I was too ashamed of my own lies and too proud to admit to her that I did the same thing too. I think all I said was "okay" and changed the subject. I lied about my lying to maintain my "integrity"; how rife with irony that was I can only appreciate now.
I don't know how suddenly I started thinking about this again. But the other day I just realised that I take what people tell me for granted a hundred percent of the time. I function on the presumption that whatever people tell me is the truth. To have to second-guess every fact that you're presented with throughout the day would be truly awful; living in naivety's still got to be a cut above living in a perpetual state of distrust.
But people do lie. To me, to you. Not just establishments or institutions or advertisements. People closest to you. People you trust. About trivial things sometimes, but about things that matter too. About things that would devastate you if you found out that you'd been lied to. I'm sure in the constellation of lies that I've (presumably) been told in my life, there are some that fall into the latter category.
And that's really scary. It's like, 30-38% of my life as I understand it could be a lie. A facade. Fiction. Fake. Fabricated. False.
*
(Another F word comes to mind, but for everyone's sake I'll keep it to myself.)
*
But *damn*...
posted by me. @ 2:51 PM
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