I know this can be a tough one to swallow, and I know lots of people will come back with questions about lying in order to spare someone else’s feelings. I think the bottom line is if you want to live authentically, if you want to live in a way that honors what is true for you, you really have to look at areas in your life where you might be lying to yourself, first. Because the most damaging lies we tell are the ones we tell to ourselves. And if you’re living a life where you accept as a necessity the “white lie”, there’s a good chance you’re chipping away at the feeling that you can trust yourself with the big stuff. Lying doesn’t feel good, even if you do it in the name of sparing someone else. It feeds and strengthens the idea you have of yourself that you’re not a truthful person. Nothing cures you of white lies faster than having children with big ears. And it makes you realize, if you hadn’t already, how ready you might be to bend the truth to spare someone else’s pain, or your own. But maybe in sparing someone the truth you’re also denying them an opportunity to grow. If the truth is something that’s nothing but hurtful, and it’s around a topic the other party cannot control or change, then it might be best left unsaid. I think the idea is truth or silence. Maybe it’s easier for you to tell the friend you’ve kept waiting at a restaurant that traffic was awful, instead of saying you didn’t leave yourself enough time because you were answering emails or on Facebook. And that underneath that, the real reason you’re late is you’re addicted to stress, and create scenarios that will ensure you’re feeling some on your way out the door. Sometimes we perpetuate something that doesn’t feel good, just because it feels familiar. And I realize that would be an unusual conversation starter, but if you blame it on traffic, you’ve just lied and stolen, because the time they were waiting is time they can’t have back. And you know it, even if they don’t, and you have to live with that uncomfortable feeling and disappointment in yourself. And I say this to you as someone who struggles with punctuality, and wants to excuse my difficulties around this issue by saying I have two small kids, and that it’s hard to get everyone wrangled and out the door on time. It is, but that’s not an excuse, that’s a reality that simply means I have to set out earlier to get where I’m going, and factor in enough time for unscheduled meltdowns, or someone’s sudden need to poop as we race out the door. It also means maybe all three beds don’t always need to be made, and the house doesn’t have to be “perfect” for me to close the door.

For a long time I excused unhealthy decisions and patterns in my life by blaming other people. That’s a common way we lie to ourselves. Instead of doing the work to heal places within us that are raw and in need of our kind attention, we point fingers and stomp our feet and feed our sad stories and perpetuate our own suffering, and that of the people who love us. Your past does not have to define your present or your future. If you’re over 25 (and I’m being generous, because I think we could say 20, easily), you are now accountable for what you do. Even if things went terribly wrong when you were little, and you have a chronological list of reasons that explains why you are the way you are. You probably know people like that; I do, and I used to be one of them, so I recognize the tendency. People cling to stories of wrong-doing, ways they were hurt, or disappointed or mistreated, and tell you this is how they are, and these are the reasons why. Identification is step one, it’s not the end of the line. Recognizing your tendencies and triggers (or samskaras as we yogi/nis call them), is beautiful; it means you’re aware and awake and getting to know yourself. But leaving it at that is not courageous. You’re still here, right? That stuff you went through didn’t kill you then, and it’s not going to now, either. If old, old stuff is still dogging you then it isn’t healed yet. Denying it, repressing it, avoiding it, or numbing it out won’t work, and those are all forms of lying, of refusing to face reality as it is.

There’s an art to speaking the truth kindly and calmly, it takes practice. Starting to face your own areas of weakness with compassion and honesty is a great way to figure out how to do it for other people. Is it awful if I’m three to five minutes late when I meet a friend, when it used to be more like 15? Not by L.A. standards, but it’s still not where I want to be. Is it my mom’s fault because she was always late? Um, no. Hello? Seriously. Is my mom living in my house making me late? (And I love my mom to pieces, and to this day, my brother and I have insane amounts of fun doing impressions of my step-dad calling out, “Here we go!!” 30-60 minutes before anyone else in the house was ready, and heading out the door to wait in the car which he’d end up honking eventually). The point is, we all have our stuff. Our issues, our areas that are not easy to deal with or simple to conquer, even though from the outside a person might say, “What’s wrong with you? Just leave ten minutes earlier!” This old stuff requires time and intense effort and patience and compassion for yourself, as does your opinion about any truth you might share with anyone else. And the more you can be truthful in all areas of your life, including those places where you have work to do, the faster you’ll get through that stuff, and the better you’ll feel about yourself. Sending you love, with a heaping side of truth 😉 Ally