I stood in the kitchen looking at the baseball-size hole in the microwave door. I called for the kids. “Who made the hole?” I croaked. The answers:
“What hole?”
“There’s a hole?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Are you sure it’s a hole?”
“We didn’t make a hole.”
“In the microwave?”
“Maybe it was a bird.”
And so it went. Maybe they didn’t make the hole. There are plenty of unsolved mysteries in the world. In fact, in this world, if we are to achieve even middling contentment, we must accept that there are some things we will never know the truth about. The mind swims in a petrie dish of ambiguity. We need to practice what William Butler Yeats called “Negative capability”—a strange term by which he meant that we must be “…capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” (Yeats’ words.)
So there’s the Truth (somewhere), and there’s the Lie. We all lie, have lied, will lie. When your friend asks, “Do you like my new haircut?” you are not going to say, “It makes you look like a chimp.” You’ll say, “It’s nice.” Or, if you’re not all that fond of her, you’ll say, “It suits your personality.” Often we’ll fib in order not to hurt someone. We would not say to a new mother, “That’s some ugly baby!” Sometimes we lie to make someone happy. Or a lie can be a kindness. We don’t say, for example, “Your Uncle Charlie died a horrible, excruciating death after being hit and tilled by a road tiller on Route 1. And he was drunk.” Instead, we say, “Charlie died peacefully unconscious by the side of the road among the day lilies.”
In court we are exhorted to tell the “WHOLE truth” because the court knows we’ll want to leave stuff out. “Yes, it’s true,” we’ll offer, “I did break into Norman’s car, but just to borrow the GPS/Sat Nav device.” To tell the whole truth, we might have to say, “I was high on crystal meth and thought Norman’s car windows were Satan’s eyeballs. I smashed them to save the world. When I saw the GPS/Sat Nav thing, I thought, ‘Why not?’—though I wasn’t sure what it was.” We lie to protect ourselves.
In court as a witness, we might get excited and add little touches of our own to the truth. When the court tells us to tell the truth and NOTHING BUT, I take that to mean, “Just the facts, Ma’am.” It means that what we say when we’re in the witness stand should be clean and simple and true. Something like, “In Home Depot on July 14, I saw that man wheel out a bandsaw and leave without paying.” Not more than the truth. Not, “I saw that man steal a bandsaw and I thought, ‘What’s he want with that? To chop up people after he’s murdered them, that’s what. Because that bandsaw booster looked to me like your typical murderer with those weirdo ears and that fake leather hat with the pond gunk stains. I know a murderer when I see one!” “Speculation!” the defense will howl. It was not nothing but the truth.
Some people lie as easy as breathing. Some lies are very, very bad. Big, beautiful lies. Some people lie for a living. Think spies, salesmen, congressmen. There’s that. But most of us fib about small issues. We lie to get out of things. “No, I can’t go with you to watch the hotdog eating contest,” we’ll say. Because, in truth, it will make us gag and we don’t want to look like a wuss. So we say, “The Archbishop comes on that day for the blessing of the private parts.” Lies are so useful, it’s a wonder we just don’t wear ID badges saying, “Pants on fire.” (Just below “pants,” in tiny letters, “Recently blessed by the Archbishop.”)
I have a true story I want to share with you concerning the truth. Years back I worked in New Haven at a metal deposition company. The small group of people working there were scientists, metal deposition specialists, me (the secretary), and one man who did the books. We enjoyed each other. We were a mixture of zaniness and philosophy.
On summer days we’d all take our lunches outside behind the office building where there were three trees and a picnic table. There we’d have our interesting zany-philophical discussions. Sophomoric, maybe, but fun. One day our discussion turned to the immorality of lying. I am not contentious, but I like a good debate. So I told the group that, in some instances, a lie can be a good thing. This shocked the bookkeeper. The bookkeeper was a very lovely, kind, staid, quite religious man. A man you could count on—one, two, three, four…. “Never! Never a good thing to lie!” he said. So I said, “But supposing I was about to be hanged for a crime I did not commit, and you knew I was innocent.” (I skipped over how he knew—philosophers make Kierkegaardian leaps.) “Would you not lie for me, invent an alibi, to save my life?”
Reader, he said, “NO.” “NO,” he said again. He said he could never tell a lie. It was my turn to be shocked. “You’d let me hang for a crime I did not commit,” I cried, “even though you knew me to be innocent?” “I could never tell a lie,” he said. (Rather proudly, at that.) I thought of Washington and the dang cherry tree. “But I’m worth more than a cherry tree!” I wailed. He didn’t get the connection.
For 20 years now I’ve ruminated over that summer day and the bookkeeper’s declaration. And—philosophically—I’ve concluded thusly:
The truth shall set you free, but a lie can save your ass.
