To Tell or Not To Tell the Truth: That is the question

You know, the other day, my daughter "corrected" me as I was making a return at Target. I told the cashier that my daughter had cut the tags off the shirt before she had a chance to try it on. This wasn't entirely true, but the truth happened in the fever of our morning routine and getting ready for school. In truth, I had cut off the tags in the midst of changing my toddler's disgusting night-long diaper, and I didn't recall exactly the cutting-tags-off-a-shirt part of it (wow - interesting, here: Soph could probably come up to me, ask me to sign something in the harried craze of me getting Mak dressed, and I would probably do it with out thinking... scary.). Sophia corrected me in front of the cashier, refusing to be blamed for the premature removal of the tags, because that would be not true. That would be a lie. In the glaze of the morning, I had forgotten the small details. But, in my push for her telling the truth, and in my enforcing of its importance, she reminded me to tell it, myself. She gracefully pointed out that she is NOT allowed to play with scissors; she is NOT allowed to cut tags off clothes without asking me first; she did NOT break the rules, because she came to me, asked me to do it. As much as I turned around, shushed her, she was persistent. She chased the truth, was unafraid of being heard. She didn't mumble, but she was also not disrespectful. She simply wanted to see that I understood the truth, reality. She didn't think of my embarrassment, she only thought of the fact that I have taught her, diligently, to *always* tell the truth.

I now know that this world has a metric system of rating lies - white lies being benign, maybe functionally necessary to preserve your (??) innocence or character, used sparingly or (??) not, all the while being distortions of the truth; half-truths cover details that could hurt - we justify these with the thought that ommission isn't a lie, isn't being dishonest, it's being KIND because we're thinking of someone else's feelings; true lies being complete fabrications are just the fantastical imaginations that someone believes are reality - and like a web, we do get tangled, because they lose their crisp details the more we tell them. But this rating system - is it necessary? Isn't a lie inherent in its nature just as being pregnant is? Isn't a lie, even in its "white" form still a lie? Isn't any version of the truth other than the real version a lie? Why do we rate them? Is it so that our consciences can bear the weight of our indiscretions and we won't crumble underneath them?

My reminder today is to live my life as a memoir to telling the truth. That, if I want my children to be honest and possess integrity, it is not my words that will penetrate their choices: it is my choices that will influence theirs. Sometimes the truth hurts, but so does life. Perhaps a healthy way of learning how to deal with disappointment is first with dealing with the truth at all costs. Either way, we'll all have our chance at this at some point in our life. Because, even though a lie seeks to hide the truth, there are just some situations we cannot avoid or hide from. They hurt, they sting, they are unavoidable, they are our reality. They are our truth.