Sh(un)Common Knowledge

You, my friends, are LIARS! Don’t get offended or too hasty, because I did call you my friends first. I’m a LIAR TOO! We all are. Our parents lied, our grandparents lied and our kids will follow suit. Our leaders, politicians, and preachers all lie. The billboards, the banks, and everything on the News. Our Businesses, the scientists, and even your boss too! ALL LIARS! If anyone has ever told you that they don't lie, it is a lie! This is not to pass judgement on anyone. I can assure you that my “liar-pants” have been on fire for 36 years. No, this is more of a cordial invite to a dinner party. The main course: TRUTH sirloin marinated in homemade LIES with a side of GOSPEL gravy. It can be a little tough to chew at times, but we still cook it to perfection. No need to R.S.V.P., because it's cooked in your own kitchen.

Okay, now that I have your attention let me inform you upfront; We can not escape the lies, nor the spell of telling them. It is bred into our genetic instruction. Is it a coincidence that the word “spell” is in spelling or “curse” in cursive? I think not! Coincidences don't exist my friends. It is a sickness. A virus interwoven so tightly that it becomes a part of us like a highly developing entity. We feed it energy and nurture it until it fully consumes our brain conditioning our thoughts. It’s BRILLIANT! An absolute natural conformity. The lie has become so relevant in our lives that we live “liar-lifestyles”. We rename it as an “alternative fact” or a “metaphorical truth” to provide us with a variety, but the FACT remains the TRUTH is absolute. It is the LIE we have cooked up over the years.

Allow this to hit your taste-buds for a second: by continuing to label our deception as “little white lies” and “fibs” they tend to spew out much smoother. Don't you agree? Of course they do! We smudge the “fine-lines” of fact and fiction to appease our audience; However, this is only a misconception of reality my friends. When we lie we are not shading the truth, WE ARE SHAPING IT! What if I told you that the only glue holding reality together is perspective? Picture a sail boat sailing aim-fully towards the horizon, crashing wave after wave. The wind is your only compass and you are driven to reach the point where the sun rests upon the sea. With each rocking wave you're getting closer, closer to the sun, but with no avail; The horizon is infinite. Our minds are infinite.

Here is some bite-sized truth for you: On average we speak roughly 16,000 words a day. I, personally, speak about 1,000 words a minute (so I've been told), but words do not compute themselves my friends. To rephrase it:, a cake doesn't bake itself! Regardless of how you slide the ingredients into the oven, they must be combined together before it will bake properly. That is what we do in our minds. We brew word soup with deceitful ingredients. Your brain is simmering anywhere between 6-20,000 thoughts per day! What is your mouth dishing out? The spells we use are like our fingerprint on the world's ear. Be careful what you say, because the world is always listening.

Does anyone need a review on what a “LIE” actually is? Many of us walk a very fine line of white lies so let us recapture how the dictionary has defined the lie since the 1800’s. It states to lie means: “to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive” or “ to create a false or misleading impression”(-Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary,Accessed 21 Mar,2021.)

With “intent to deceive” it states, but most of us including myself, do not inspire to be deceptive. Right? Are we intentionally deceiving our children every time we gently replace a fallen tooth with a $1? How about every Christmas when we “fib” and say “Santa” delivered all the presents? Or, maybe when your spouse asks “How do I look?” Can anyone tell me how many “sick-days” they’ve used whilst not being “sick”? How many of us have said “I’m on the way”, or “My phone died”? These examples are prime beef to the brain my friends, proving we are all LIARS!

Why though? Why do we “create false impressions”?

I was 6 years old the first and second time I lied. I will never forget it because to me, that day, felt like a sacrifice. A sacrifice of my honesty and integrity. I was in 1st grade, it was the end of the school day and every kid scurried to their cubbies to grab their book bags and coats. As you can imagine the cubby wall was in absolute disbarment! A war-zone between 1980’s cartoon characters. Ninja Turtles, mermaids and Disney princesses were everywhere. My classroom alone had enough neon jackets to give you a permanent headache. I glanced over the chaotic gathering of kids all hunting their supplies, when something stood out above the rest.An Umbrella! But, not just any umbrella…. No, this umbrella was bright purple and dark grape. Like silk mountains of lavender and velvet hills of grape, patiently awaiting the rainfall. The handle was a silver shooting star making landfall in the valley. The most beautiful umbrella I had ever seen. It did not belong to me, but I wanted it! The LIE began churning while my honesty was slowly burning. That is when I heard it. The words were not mine, but I acted on them.

“Grab it”...it said

“Hurry, no one is looking”

I looked down to see the umbrella already in my hands.

“I stole an umbrella…” I thought.

As I stood there holding it, gazing at it, it looked different. It was not as glamorous as I remembered, but once more I peered around the room to locate the exit and check my surroundings. A 6 year old isn't as attentive as you might presume, because there she stood, my teacher. She was consoling a teary-eyed little girl whose umbrella was just stolen, and they were pointing at me. I knew I was caught, purple umbrella in hand, but a ritual of lies had already commenced in my mind and I was ready to deceive....For. An. Umbrella!!

Three decades passed since that day and that umbrella is the least of my worries. Yet, so significant. For ten thousand days not even the rain could sadden me. I was floating on a river of lies. I let the water carry me ten thousand ways with no bridge in between, but this isn't an autobiography. It’s dinner, remember? Let me serve some steak: Remember those 6,000+ thoughts that we have each day, well how many of them are actually yours? It has been factually stated some scientists can count each passing thought as it appears and dissolves from our mind. Can they read them too? My friends, I woke up one morning five hundred days ago with a different yearning. I wanted to finally taste the TRUTH! It has been the most DELICIOUS treat to myself. We owe it ourselves to taste the truth. Who wants to reheat all those leftover lies?

……...Dinner is served.