until today. Then I found this in the search engine and I got a few shivers in the right places.
Doesn't this seem to make sense? On the surface, it sure does. It would seem that the truth is always preferable to an intentionally delivered non-truth. Ah, I think I just tripped over something. Technically, a lie is the communication of an idea or a thought that is other than the one that the speaker really has in mind. Some lies are innocuous attempts at humor. Like for example the wry announcement, "Great weather out there today!" during an ear-ripping Nor'easter. No harm done there. I did try to convince myself that dentists don't lie, but I never really succeeded. Over the last few years I have grown accustomed to the painful feeling, so I just relax in the thought that it will all go away rather quickly. After the first time I visit a dentist, I don't get the false reassurance any more. If the dentist does try to tell me that it will not hurt, I have gotten to the point where my response is, "You mother told you never to fib." That little bit of infantile language has two effects: It makes the dentist smile and it is never repeated to me by the same dentist.
Talking about comforting someone with the truth instead of with a lie, one dentist whom I really respected and thouroughly enjoyed at one time, slipped an "OOPS!" in there while fishing around in the deep dungeon of the # 32 molar. She made the mistake of retracting herself from the dungeon. I smiled and said, "OOPS??" Are you sure that you're supposed to say that? She did not exculpate herself, much to her credit. Furthermore, she said, "I can't anaesthetize you any more, so what I have to do now is perhaps going to be "uncomfortable." I smile sweetly at the fair young lady and said, "Perhaps?" "Uncomfortable?" Tough lady, this dentist! She came back with, "I am making allowances for your threshhold of pain." She shut me up by diving back into my gaping pie hole before finishing the sentence. Yeah, it was a smidgeon more than "uncomfortable" but I lived through it and never held it against her because I can't do that to people who give me a reason to have fond memories of human foibles.
Comforting people with lies is not good practice. Telling someone that "This is smoothe, low alcohol Bourbon" (55% alcohol) is not a comforting way of acting. The famous repartee, "Don't sweat it, it's just small stuff" will make the speaker feel good and the hearer feel good if it is true. If it is not true, then neither will escape the remorseful after taste and the resulting discomfort in the relationship is quasi assured.
So, even if the truth is going to hurt, deliver it anyway. If it hurts so badly that the relationship is dead, that's not all that bad. It's one less cigar that you'll have to give at your wake...or one less Kleenex. The way I'm sizing up my situation, I think I will be able to get by for about $10.00 for both commodities, including matches.
Oh, and by the way, remember, "It's a sin to tell a lie."
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