Our Lies Unmake Reality
Not so long ago, I told my brother that I loved him. There’s nothing particularly weird about that, but growing up in our family, that just wasn’t done.
Yes, I probably made it weird. If memory serves, he awkwardly returned the sentiment. Nonetheless, it had to be done. Family communications were particularly bad back then, and it was made a thousand times worse by the gooey membrane of omertà that encased all of us. Everything was always light. Surface. If things veered too close to TRVTH, we’d easily course-correct to something ironic, light or funny.
It did make family gatherings hilarious, though. Throw in a couple of cases of beer or a few bottles of wine, a death grip on the ledge you’re hanging over, with a maelstrom of family drama roiling below, and you’ve got yourself the perfect brew for exquisite gallows humor.
I think that if I’d ever sliced through the membrane in those moments, and told one of the men that I loved him, he would have said, “That’s precious, Nancy.”
It just wasn’t done.
But ever since, my brother and I have told each other we loved each other multiple times. He more than me, I think. He’ll go out of his way to call me up and tell me. A whole fortress of family issues demolished in an instant.
Why was it this way?
It was an atmosphere of lies that obscured, or worse, unmade reality.
When I started research for this post (yes, I actually do a bit of research, believe it or not), I was thinking I’d write something about the lies we tell ourselves. Something something “It’s important to tell the truth even when it’s difficult.” Theoretically, this ‘stack is about helping guys (mainly me) get their lives under control, and one of the very first things we have to do is stop BSing ourselves. Face the truth, no matter how painful. I might say that’s the whole reason I’m in the place I am right now - complete and utter failure to simply identify and/or express reality.
As I made a list of lies we tell ourselves, I began to see a whole wide vista of deceit and deception. It was merde all the way to the horizon. (I’m sure there’s a monk or two reading this, thinking, “Welcome to the party, pal.”) We don’t just tell little white lies to avoid awkward social situations, or flat-out tell lies to gain money, power, prestige, etc. We might, in reflective moments, consciously have to wrestle with telling a falsehood or not. But that’s just the surface - it appears, based on the distressingly long list I compiled on my short morning walk, that everything we say, do, think or assume is based on at least a partial lie.
It’s fairly concerning. But wait - it gets worse.
I think most people sense it. Left or right, believer or non-believer - we all know there’s something deeply wrong right now. Tragically, the solutions all seem to come from even more vicious lies. Normal teenage angst is “solved” with irreversible mutilation. Men deepen the divide between themselves and the women they (should) love by buying into “red pill” ideology. And the ubiquity of berry-flavored beers should inform all of us that the malaise of abundance is rotting our souls.
Lies upon lies upon lies.
Once you realize how far the infection has gone, you naturally want to scrape it out. But the more of the necrotic tissue you remove, the wider the void becomes. This is the problem I have with so much of the self-help/self-improvement sphere: It correctly identifies the problems, roots them out, but then pours more toxic waste into the void.
As a believer, I know what, or rather Who, should be filling up that void. And He is, although it’s more like a dim phosphorescence on the cave wall than a ray of light at this point. And while it’s pretty, and literally illuminating, I’m still terminally ill with lies we believers tell ourselves, or the lies we’ve been taught. Lies in the form of assumptions, plenty of lies about my own worthiness, but also, vicious, demonic lies about my UNworthiness. And then there are the lies of unnecessary complexity…
What it comes down to, in my admittedly broken, blind, intellectually and emotionally retarded experience, is what God has been telling us all along: Love each other. I know - this reeks of Hollywood-inspired, saccharine-laden pseudo-morality. Maybe it is, but it’s the closest I can get to the truth on this one. I don’t just believe it - it has seized me.
When I love, which is to say, “when I will the good for the other,” (an awkwardly theologized term, but adequate), it’s more than punching a hole through the cave wall. It’s standing in the middle of a high prairie at noon on a cloudless day.
In this light, we can embrace the stranger, because he’s not so strange anymore. No stranger than us, anyway. All of the struggles, all of the controversies, all of the debates, positions, awkwardness, ideologies…they’re just gone.
I found this idea expressed much better in this piece over at Ancient Faith. It’s this idea that “lying isn’t a moral issue, but an issue that goes to the very heart of our existence.” It’s a concept that I’ve heard many times before, but I always thought it was a bit above my pay grade.
“Thus lying, more than being a moral problem, states something which, in fact, has no true existence. It is a fiction and a fantasy.”
“Such actions (lying to ourselves) do tremendous damage to our heart - making it a place of darkness and unable to discern the truth. For where the truth is acknowledged, darkness and lies are swept away.”
Them’s my thoughts, anyway. Maybe there’s some truth to them. It would be kind of ironic if there wasn’t.
Many thanks for your eyeballs. Thoughts? Comments? Rants? Let me know below, on Twitter, or cjolma AT gmail DOT com.