The Truth Shall Set You Free

As I grow older (and hopefully wiser), I can't help finding cliches a little funny. What a timeless testament of the stubborn state of mind we have in our younger days. Cliches used to annoy me! I found them to be a thoughtless, cheesy way to trick people into thinking things weren't as bad as they seemed.

And now? Now I realize why these statements have withstood the test of time... they're true! I also realize that my acceptance of their validity, combined with my need to profess such validity, makes me a genuine "old person!" For years I have made the following declaration: "You know you're 'old' when you find yourself giving someone else the very same advice you didn't listen to when you were young."

What provoked this blog is that I stumbled across "evidence" that my ex is indeed seeing the woman that his friend's girlfriend felt compelled to tell me about. (It's also raining, which means I can't paint my house and have nothing better to do at the moment.) Not lacking in intelligence, it was obvious to me that I had been traded in; just as the girl he had dated before me, and the girl before her. He was a serial dater. An eager to commit, yet afraid of commitment guy. A mess, you could say, and none of that bothered me a bit. What I found irritating, and, quite frankly, sad, is that at 41 years old, this guy just couldn't admit it.

Far from perfect, I'm a very understanding person. Things change. People change. People want different things. People don't know what they want... and on and on it goes. But why do people confine themselves to tangled webs of untruth? Did he really believe I didn't know? Did he actually believe that the little stories he concocted would somehow transform reality and change the facts? He could have saved himself two weeks of excuses and months of awkward hellos in the hallways if he had just simply told the truth. But considering he did the same exact thing to the two women he dated before me, I suspect he finds some type of unhealthy reward in the drama that results from his overlapping of women. In fact, his "m.o." with me v.s. the girl before me, was almost exactly replicated in the me v.s. the girl after. His wooing is practically scripted, and creepily repetitive.

Regardless of my discovery of who he (un) truly was, our life goals were so very different that a long-term relationship had little chance to be successful. It was fun when it was what he told me it was, what I thought it was. And if he had had the courage to tell me the truth when he should have, I may have still had fond, untainted, memories of him.

I won't say that I have never bended, twisted, manipulated, or recreated the truth in my own life. My confused late teens and early twenties seemed to demand that you do so. I'm not really sure when this revelation occurred; when I discovered that the truth was the quickest end to most any situation. But since that discovery, it is a very rare occurrence for me to deviate from the instant escape that honesty provides.

The truth. It really does set you free. It sets you free of those internal expectations to be super-human... perfect. Speaking the truth means you have peace of mind, courage, and respect; that you may have even... made a mistake. (GASP!) Truth is the one-stop, direct way to resolution, a kind of conversation convenience store; whereas lies require a never-ending creation of cover-ups and fear of exposure. Not only is telling the truth the "right" thing to do, the reward is instantaneous... which means our American instant-gratification-seeking nature should embrace truth. Masses of people should be crowding the city streets shouting:

"I cheated on my SATs!"

"I only married my husband because I was afraid of being alone!"

"Homeless people mean nothing to me, I just like the attention I get when it looks like I care about them!"

"My socks haven't been washed in three days!"

"This isn't really my hair, it's a toupe!"

Okay, maybe mass public confessionals would be a little disturbing. However, I think a little more truth in everyone's lives would truly be...

liberating.