Barbecue sauce and ice cream sandwiches

Lies and their paths to betrayal often end in one place.

“I am an ice cream sandwich.”

“Be pessimistic. It’s sweeter when you are wrong,” my friend said.

No, but sometimes it is just as sweet when you’re not wrong. Then, on lies. Lies told in the belief there is no proof, are lies that can backfire as a betrayal and betrayals echo through time. Especially, for those who were betrayed very young and wounded, for them, the next betrayal is always around the next corner.

Grief and memory outsmart them. 

For a child, who’s still developing a sense of trust and awareness in the world— an adult physically punishing them is a profound form of betrayal. Specifically, an adult whose survival they depend upon. Silencing a child is the deepest scar. This is how dissociation and internal conflict begin. Trust becomes a cloud in the sky, always blown away by the slightest breeze.

Grief and memory outsmart them. 

Their truth is unbearable because it opens that chasm. So, they learn to lie and the lies become blatant, and the omissions flow like melted butter.

Grief and memory outsmart them. 

There are all types of lies: lies by commission, lies by omission (“A half-truth is a whole lie.”), even “white” ones. And then, there is a different type of liar who, a few standard deviations away from the mean, lies with impunity; the one under explicit oath, lies told by counsel under the aegis of their bar membership—the ones committed with the implied oath to the truth that a person’s position transmits. Lies can be the “mother tongue” of some, not just of politicians, but of the people closest to you. This liar treats lies as a banal necessity as if they are merely the result of the fact that this liar is better than anyone else, that lying is simply the job that he or she seems to excel at; and, having never ever been punished, they are expecting no punishment, as their advisor advises.

You may as well be an ice cream sandwich to this kind of liar because they cannot distinguish between lying about a human being and lying about an ice cream sandwich. Like a drunk who cannot distinguish between asparagus and that tipping point drink of a blackout.

You are an ice cream sandwich.

Lies are overused in literature and the arts:

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”—Oscar Wilde

“Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.”—Khaled Hosseini

“The best-laid plot can injure its maker, and then a man’s perfidy will rebound on itself.”—Jean de la Fontaine

“I don’t lie. I improve on life.”—Josephine Baker

“I don’t lie. I exaggerate.”

So, why do people lie under oath? In court? To an FBI Special Agent (it’s a felony)?

To an audience of followers? To a judge?

What type of person is not afraid of the consequences? When are consequences easier to bear than telling the truth?

The French say “sal caractère.” No, that’s not quite it. What would happen to a group of starlings murmuring if just one lied to the other?