Everyone seems to be hiding something. Whether it’s a knife or a secret doesn’t make much of a difference; we cover the bloodstains from the murder the same way that we lie at night with the facades of our true selves.

People often live by the same, hypocritical beliefs-that “honesty is the best policy,” and “the truth will set you free.” Yet many of the people that stress the values of honesty, lie when swimming in even the weakest of turbulent waters. Eventually the water begins to feel good, although it gets deeper, and people simply improve their swimming abilities. So they keep lying, improving and swimming, until they get tired, until finally, they drown.

It’s not necessarily a bad way to go about life, though.

Through lying, you can escape the brutalities of the world. You just keep telling yourself what you want to hear-that you’ll be okay, or that something really isn’t a problem.
So your lies sometimes offer a way to avoid disappointment.
And after a while, you really start to believe in the lies, and they become the truth, dictating your life. You lie through your day, achieving small victories over your mind and others. People like you because you tell them what they want to hear, and at the end of each day, you’re fairly content with your actions and successes.
And after years of telling only lies, you grow old, possibly realize that you were respected for your lies and lived a dishonest, meaningless life, and then die with disappointment.
But that’s just a cynical, oversimplification of life.

Now let’s assume that you never lie.
Through telling the truth, you face the brutalities of the world head-on. You keep telling yourself what you know-that you aren’t okay, and you might never be okay. That something really is a problem, and you have to fix it in order to be honest.
So your truths sometimes offer disappointment.
And after a while, the weight of life starts to bring you down. You tell the truth each day, and you develop a pessimistic attitude toward the future. You have little hope of overcoming your mind, and as for others, they frequently get angry with you. You tell them what you truly think of their appearance or personality, and you get in many arguments; you don’t avoid potential conflicts, even if they don’t matter in the larger scheme of things, simply for the sake of being honest. And at the end of each day, you’re not content with your actions and few, almost non-existent, successes.
And after years of telling only truths, you grow old, possibly realize that you were an outcast, and lived a depressing, meaningless life, and then die with disappointment.
But that too is just a cynical, oversimplification of life.

Our lies hide our true selves and give us a false meaning of life, and our truths hide some of the potential happiness of the world, also leaving us with a relatively worthless life. When isolated, telling only lies or only truths will offer unhappiness.
Maybe we can only lie when necessary—let’s not lie to cover the bloodstains from the murder, but let’s also not tell the wife of the man that we killed that we aren’t sorry, robbing her of the ounce of contentment that a small lie could have produced.
Maybe we can tell the truth when necessary—let’s try to be as honest with ourselves as much as possible; let’s hide what is necessary.
Our world isn’t black or white; let’s achieve a balance of honesty.