괜찮아요

I’ve just googled the word ‘lies’ and in 0.17 seconds, 121, 000, 000 results were found. Wow! But of course, I’m sure it consists of results found for the plural verb form as well as the plural noun form. I was on my way home with a fellow colleague just now and she was sharing with me what one of her counselling clients told her. She was told to write down what she thinks of herself, in terms of positive and negative traits and actions, and for one of her negative traits was “I like to lie”, so my colleague was, in an attempt to change her negative perception of herself to a better one, asking her why that was bad.

Her reply shows that she know why she should not lie, and her next statement really got us tickled: “But I still want to lie leh“. hahaa~ that’s kids for you, innocent, and wanting to do what they want even when they know it might not be good. Recently, I’ve been watching this 2005-06 Korean drama series titled “My Girl“. The story started off with this girl named Ju Yoo-rin who has led a life of a swindler’s daughter and she would often lie to get her way out of situation. As time goes by and she fell in love with Seol Gong-chan, who ‘employed’ her to pretend to be his long lost cousin for his dying grandfather’s sake, she found it even harder to continue lying. At the end of everything, she even had to make a huge lie so that everyone would be happier. [well, of course it was a happy ending when everyone did not fall for her last attempt to lie, and so she did not have to lie to herself and leave =)]

Although in the eyes of many, probably one wont believe that a swindler/liar would have conscience, but I would really beg to differ. Actually, what we always see on the surface may not be the real reason and cause of matters. There may be other factors and reasons behind the doings without our knowledge. Just like why is it that sometimes we speak about “telling white lies”. A lie is a lie, and we termed it “white lie” to make ourselves feel better. The more important thing is, when we tell a lie, what was our starting off point for doing so? Is it a necessary action to be taken? Is it at the last resort?

There was this Russian quote that goes: ”With lies you may go ahead in the world, but you can never go back.”  – how true.

When the kid said she still “wants to lie”, what she really mean was that she finds this to be the way out; to escape from whatever the reality is around her; to protect herself from ‘potential’ harm. To a child, what could be a better solution when (s)he cant think of any?

And when we can’t think of a better solution, don’t we sometimes lie to ourselves, thinking that as long as this lie will make others happy, our own suffering is worth it?