TV’s loveable curmudgeon, Dr. Gregory House offers us the diagnosis that “Everybody Lies!”

It’s a memorable line simply because it’s true.

It’s my personal belief that the more lies we tell, the less life we live.

The prescription seems to be to find out how many lies you can live with.

This is not a dictate to stop lying; that’s impossible. It’s more about recognizing the process at work and assessing how much life it is draining from you.

Lying runs the gamut from “If you are living a lie, you are not living,” to “Lying just enough to get by.”

Neither position is morally justifiable no matter how eloquent our rhetoric. So this is not about flogging yourself for lying. It’s more about risk assessment.

The home spun remedy that your mother gave you was noble: “Tell the truth and you won’t have to keep track of your lies.” That’s another way of saying that each lie causes you to waste energy each time you prop it up. Too many lies = Too little life.

So how do you know if your lies are sucking the life force out of you? Look at the symptoms.

Are you sleeping poorly? Drowning your sorrows? Edgy all the time? Constantly defending yourself? The warning signs are endless. The telltale result is this: The more we lie, the more we die.

It’s really easy to spot someone else’s lies. That’s not as helpful as recognizing our own. Or as Jesus said it another way, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

The journey towards truth (or more life) is a shedding process. You’ll never get rid of every flake of dandruff, but certainly enough to lighten the load on your shoulders. A few flakes = a few white lies; too many will snow you under.

How many are too many? Only you can answer that question.

If you desire to feel more alive, you have to be willing to let go of your lies. You’ll never drop all of them, just enough of them to unburden yourself from the full time job of keeping a lie alive. The truth is this practice works. The only question left is: “How much truth are we willing to tell?”

Our life depends on it.

All the best,

John

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