Lying Hurts the Liar
I came across this post in an old archive. The author was writing to teens about the Monica Lewinski scandal, but as I read through his wise words, I found myself thinking how appropriate the words are for all age groups:
Lying Hurts the Liar
If you lie, it will make things worse for you, too. Oh, you might get away with it once or twice, but you will get caught sooner or later.
How Does Lying Make Things Worse?
Lying makes things worse because it hurts your personal relationships: relationships with friends, brothers and sisters, parents, children, teachers and other adults.
Think of it for a moment. When you lie, it is a burden you have to carry with you. It makes you feel bad inside. You know you hurt your relationship with someone by lying. It violates the trust people have in you. Usually you have to lie again to cover up the first lie, and you feel even worse for doing that.
Have you ever noticed how badly you feel when you discover a friend has told you even a little lie? It hurts a lot. You wonder why a friend would do that to you. You think about it a lot, and you just don’t trust your friend as much after that. It’s not the same.
Then think about how you feel when someone is telling you what a good, good friend he is, and then he goes behind your back and says just the opposite. It destroys all trust.
A Way You Can Understand Lying
When you become a friend to another, you put your life in some small or large way into his cupped hands. You trust the person by putting part of your life in their hands. You want and need your friend to be worthy of that trust. When they lie to you, he lets your life slip through his hands, and is not worthy of your trust. How lonely that feels! How disappointing!
Lying harms not only personal relationships, but business relationships as well. In conducting business we also put ourselves into the hands of others. Our business associates need to be worthy of our trust. Take the simple example of going into a store and buying a box of chocolate chip cookies. The picture of the cookies on the box looks terrific. The chocolate chips look tasty, but you open the box at home and find cookies with no chips. You feel cheated because you believed what you saw. You believed a liar. No wonder you feel cheated. No wonder you’ll probably avoid that brand in the future.
Why Are We Tempted to Lie?
We are tempted to lie because we want something and use a lie to get it . . . That sounds a little selfish, doesn’t it? No wonder lying makes us feel lonely. No wonder the devil is called the father of lies.
We lie because we believe it will make things better. So you shoplift, and when questioned, say: “If I lie I won’t get caught. If I’m caught, they will be mad at me. I want to avoid the pain.”
Once we give into this temptation to lie, we start lying some more by saying: “I want to spare my loved ones the pain of knowing what I did.” So you try to spare them that pain by lying to them. That doesn’t make sense.
It’s like saying: “I’m not going to admit I robbed the bank because it will upset the police.” What kind of nonsense is that?
How Do We Respond When We Are Caught Lying?
Our response is usually to say: “Everybody lies. So what difference does it make?” The trick of a good liar is to attack the accuser. So when another kid accuses you of lying, you say: “Well, I heard you lie once.” It’s the “look who is calling the kettle black.” Attacking the accuser does not make the lie less a lie. It is still a lie. It still hurts relationships.
Your trying to justify lying by saying everybody lies is like saying: “Everybody hurts their loved ones so hurting loved ones must not be so bad.” Do you really believe that since so many people steal, stealing must not be so bad? It’s like saying everyone makes your life miserable so being miserable must not be so bad. This doesn’t make sense.
Why Are These Rationalizations Wrong?
Lies decrease the love we have for one another. They diminish hope. They extinguish trust and belief in one another. Lies are morally wrong.
Why don’t we just say: “Let’s forgive and go on with life?” Forgiveness makes us feel good, and like anything, it can be taken to excess. For example, if a person has no remorse, don’t forgive him just so you can feel good or look good. It mightily confuses the liar. Likewise, don’t forgive someone who has done nothing wrong. It confuses others.
On the other hand, don’t hold onto forgiveness as a form of vengeance. “I won’t forgive you because you need to suffer some more.” That’s like saying until you extract a pound of flesh, the score is not even.
The action of appropriate forgiveness is an action making the situation better . . . it produces a good set of outcomes. Failure to forgive in a situation where forgiveness is warranted makes the situation much worse.
It doesn’t do any good to censure a person who feels no shame, who feels no guilt. He will just make more excuses.
On the other hand, it does a great deal of good to refrain from censuring a person who already has censured himself. This is the person who really feels guilt and tries to make amends. Failure to forgive here is inappropriate.
It’s also good to remember that there is a difference between forgiving and condoning. Condoning diminishes the action. It’s inaccurate and it’s a cop-out. The religious call to forgiveness is not a call to be a sucker. If what was done hurt you, you need to say that, and not pretend it didn’t hurt and it doesn’t matter.
At every point a person has a choice to forgive or not forgive for the right reasons. Conciliatory personalities tend to forgive too much, too quickly. Aggressive personalities tend to forgive too little, too late. We need to strike a balance.
Is it Hard to Forgive After the Lying Has Stopped?
Yes, it is a lot easier to forgive when the person is trying to make up to you for all the lies he told you. Even then, it takes a long time for forgiveness to settle in. Why? Because the hurt is still there.
It is rather easy for a person who lies from time-to-time to quit. It can
be done rather readily if there is determination to do so. What about a person who lies habitually over a period of time and cannot quit easily or without consistent help? A habitual liar will be tempted to believe he just has to say he’s sorry, just as a habitual drinker will tend to believe all he has to say is he’s sorry. It doesn’t work that way. On the other hand, bull throwers, braggarts and exaggerators are a tiresome lot, but they are easier to get along with than habitual liars.
How Is Lying Made Worse?
The bigger the role model, the worse the lie. If someone I hardly know lies to me, it is bad. However, it is much worse if my mother lies to me. She is a much bigger role model in my life. That makes the lie worse.
That’s why the President falls off a mountain when he lies. Yes, he falls a great distance, and if he lies over and over again, he falls an even greater distance.
You may say that if we raise the bar too high, no one will run for public office. Then all we will get is the biggest bully or the guy with the most money. That’s really not our problem. The problem is just the opposite.
We need to raise the bar high enough so better people will run for office. We need to restore the expectation that includes honest behavior. The solution is not to take the bar away. To put it another way, if many people are lying, the solution is not to approve of lying, but rather to rekindle the fires of devotion. Otherwise, human flourishing is diminished.
Every time we see someone shoplifting in the store, we need to cry out: “Thief, thief!” Similarly, every time we see someone lying, we need to call out: “Liar, liar pants on fire!” We will be better off with fewer liars, not more.
These are just some of the reasons why the good Lord tells us not to lie.
Here is the source of the article: Girls and Boys Town.
Fat Impairs Fertility?
Today’s (March 10) Kuwait Times
Fat lovers face slimmer chance of parenthood
PARIS: Love handles might help couples get a better grip but all that excess fat could dampen their chances of having a baby, a new study has shown. Researchers monitoring nearly 48,000 couples in Denmark between 1996 and 2002 found that when both parents were clinically obese, the risk of waiting more than a year before conceiving nearly tripled. The odds improved somewhat when the prospective parents were simply overweight, but even they had to persist in their efforts longer than their leaner counterparts. Obesity could even have a demographic impact in countries where the problem of fat has taken on epidemic proportions, said the study published this week in the British Journal of Human Reproduction
“If obesity is a cause of sub-fecundity . . . this reduced capacity to reproduce could become a serious health problem.” said lead author Cecilia Ramlau-Hansen, an epidemiologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, in an interview. “The heavier the population gets, the more problems we would see with infertility,” she said. Earlier research had already established a clear link between too much fat and levels of fertility hormones. In women, excess body fat has a negative impact on ovulation and conception; in men, it is linked with decreased semen quality and the level of reproductive hormones.
But this is the first study, which looked at the conception rate among obese couples, who are increasingly common. In the United States, 30 percent of the adults – some 60 million people – are clinically obese, according to the US National Center for Health Statistics. Within certain demographic groups, such as African-Americans, the rate is even higher. In Europe, Britain tops the list with 23%, nearly twice the rate in Germany, where 12% tip the scales into obesity, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The benchmark for obesity is the body-mass index, defined as one’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of one’s height in meters. A BMI from 18.5 up to 25 is considered in the healthy range, from 25 up to 30 is overweight, and 30 or higher is obese. The authors add a word of caution, saying they did not know how often the couples in their study had sex.
“We cannot exclude that infrequent intercourse has delayed conception in overweight and obese couples,” they say, delicately. In other words, more fat may mean less sex . . . so the fertility problem could lie elsewhere.”
Lenten Update
As you know, I gave up bad language in my car for Lent. Yes, I could have given up chocolate. It would have been easier.
I’ve done fairly well. I totally slipped up once, my husband was driving. At first I thought, “well it doesn’t count because I am not driving” but – it does. It counts.
I have not succeeded in not thinking the bad word. I ask forgiveness, and I ask for help not even thinking the bad words. He IS helping. My language is getting better. Alhamd’allah.
For my non-Kuwaiti, non-Middle East friends and readers, you can actually get in more trouble here for bad language than you can for crashing a car.
True story: in one country, a man was trying to get into a gated community and was refused. He was angry and wanted to back up, rather than going forward and turning around, so he put his car in reverse and gunned the engine and smashed into the car behind him. The woman driver was shocked, and just sat there. So he moved forward, and gunned the car in reverse, and hit her again! He did it a third time. She got out of her car and screamed at him “What are you doing, you a$$####???” and he had HER arrested for bad language. He stoically paid for the damage to her car, but SHE had to go to court and through a lengthy humiliating process of finding a lawyer, etc. She also had to pay a huge fine and listen to a lecture from the judge.
A wise person NEVER makes any hand gestures, either.
Giving up bad language on the highway is not only a spiritual improvement, it could also save me a lot of trouble down the road.
Kuwait Youth Arrested for hitting 305 km/hr
Today’s Arab Times:
As many as 117 people were caught over speeding in just three hours on the King Fahd Motorway.
Traffic men fixed a radar on the motorway near Al Nuwaiseeb area from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday and issued citations to 117 violators.
A Kuwait youth has been detained for driving at a speed of 305 km/hr in his Porsche car. He was referred to the Traffic Court and his car has been impounded.
Traffic men have started a campaign against reckless drivers and riders performing stunts on their motorbikes.
My comment: Have you been following EniGma’s blog, where she proposes what she will do as the new Minister – a different Minister each day? I think someone was listening to her when she wrote her post on Ministry of Interior For a Day.
I am also hearing strains of the old Beachboys song about “fun fun fun now that daddy took the T-bird away” only substituting Porsche for T-bird. I think a huge fine would be appropriate, 30 hours of supervised remedial driving lessons and three months working with accident victims in one of the local hospitals. That’s the rehabilitation/punishment I would give.
Amer Al-Hilal Steps Up to the Plate
He eyes the pitcher. He swings the bat! He connects! He hits the ball out of the park!
OK, OK, sometimes I carry an analogy too far. But seeing our fellow blogger Hilaliya: A Kuwait State of Mind on the front page of today’s Arab Times, taking a swat at the recent ban on internet phone services made me feel like dancing.
He encourages all of us to raise the cry against this ban, a ban which is unenforceable (think of all the IT people running around Kuwait who know just how to get around this blockage) and counter to the best interests of the state of Kuwait. As Amer says – Kuwait needs a Minister of Communications who looks toward the FUTURE, and makes policy decisions for the long term good of the state and community, not one who barely comprehends the new technologies and is unwilling to go with the times.
You can’t hold back technology. The genie is out of the bottle. So how can you use the new technologies to better serve the needs of the wealthy state and its inhabitants?
Warning to Egyptians
Please, please, somebody else read this and tell me what it means. From today’s Kuwait Times:
Informed souce at the Ministry of Communications revealed that the closure of websites of companies that offer illegal international telephone call service was successful because the number of international calls from Kuwait and coming to Kuwait from other states increased following their decision.
On the other hand, the Egyptian ambassador to Kuwait Ahmad Abdullah warned Egyptian expatriates in Kuwait against violating the Kuwaiti laws expecially following a number of complaints were filed against Egyptian citizens of cheating residents with providing illegal residence permits and driving licenses. The ambassador asked all Egyptian expats to avoid this kind of illegal actions because the expats who commit such crimes will be deported from Kuwait, reported Al-Qabas.
My comment: Excuse me? How are these two paragraphs even related? How is banning telephone calls successful due to an increase in the banned telephone calls? And for what will Egyptians be deported – using an illegal phone? Providing fake residencies? Fake driver’s licenses? All of the above?
Raise Your Voices
My blogging friend Hilaliya raised HIS voice in an article entitled Kuwait ‘Ministry Of Communications’ Attempts To Extort Internet Users and found an elaborated article on the Ministry of Communication ban. You can read his rant, and go to the Arab Times article by clicking here.
It FEELS Personal
A good friend who is also a psychologist often talked about how things FEEL personal even when they are not.
• When your best friend betrays your deep dark secret to another friend because she lacks self confidence and it made her feel important for a couple seconds
• When your young wife sleeps with your brother because after two babies she wants to feel exciting and attractive and young again
• When your brother uses drugs again, after you paid for rehab and he swore up and down he would never never use again
• When your father divorces your mother and leaves her to raise the kids alone
• When your oldest friend in the world stops returning your calls and communicating with you and you later learn that she if fighting a losing battle with cancer
• When your aging husband buys a small red convertible and turns you in for a younger model, too, because he wants to think he’s hot
• When your internet phone service is declared illegal and gets shut down to spare “government wastage”
In every case above, the situation has more to do with personal issues than with you, but man, it sure FEELS personal. The fact that is doesn’t have to do with you is almost insulting, because the impact can be so painful.
And so it is with internet service. This morning, I was missing internet service for a while. It happens sometimes, but rarely longer than three-four minutes. This time it went on and on. Of course my first reaction is “oh no! Am I being penalized for having written about internet phone service being blocked???” But no, this time it wasn’t all about me. It was just an outage, and – for now – just temporary. Alhamdallah!
But this policy is going to impact on all of us painfully. Please, please raise your voices. You know better than I do where it will be the most effective. It’s important that we be able to communicate with our family and friends in a reasonably priced way. The internet phones don’t hurt anybody. Let’s keep them legal.
Internet Phones Blocked in Kuwait
Watching the news lately, I became more and more uneasy as Indian telephone service providers – evidently clandestine – were raided with frequency and shut down. All these men want is a few minutes chatting with their families, without paying an arm and a leg.
We’re all in the same boat.
In a tiny little article in the Kuwait Times yesterday, they announced that ALL internet calling services would be blocked. Those that are not already blocked soon will be.
I had heard rumblings from friends, phones not working, etc. We all subscribe to Vonage, or Skype, or one of the myriad internet phone services; it’s part of what makes living and working in Kuwait DO-ABLE.
This last year, with my father dying, the phone was my lifeline. Because it has the same area code as my family, my Mom felt free to call me anytime and give me an update on how Dad was doing. When I know we are going back for a visit, I can get on that phone and make dental appointments, schedule a doctor’s appointment, harangue my bank when they have made a mistake.
I don’t even have a private land line into our dwelling. There is a phone, but it goes through the desk where the guard doesn’t really understand English that well. All my calls come through my cell phone . . . OR the internet phone. The price of the service was well worth it in terms of my peace of mind, and my mother’s, and my sisters. Our son feels free to call us when he chooses – it is a Godsend.
The land lines here are notorious. I am outraged. The international call rates are extortionate, and the call quality is horrorific.
When we lived Qatar and the internet phone services were blocked, the major international companies in town all went to their ambassadors and had them formally protest to the government. The ambassadors made the case. And the ban was reversed.
Please. If you are Kuwaiti, use your wasta. If you are a guest-worker here in this country, protest to your Ambassador, and ask her or him to get involved, to take this to the highest levels. This ban on internet phone services hurts the morale of ALL people here in Kuwait who have family in other parts of the world. It makes Kuwait look greedy and mean-spirited, and we all know that is not the true nature of Kuwaitis.
Mortgage Crisis Spirals
(My comment: Belief in promises of “easy” money cause problems all over the world. Eventually, there is always a price to pay. Meanwhile, the current crisis presents buying opportunities to those who have saved and wisely invested.)
Mortgage Crisis Spirals, and Casualties Mount
from today’s New York Times
By JULIE CRESWELL and VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: March 5, 2007
Even in affluent Orange County, Calif., the growing wealth of executives and brokers in the booming mortgage industry was hard to miss.
For Kal Elsayed, a former executive at New Century Financial, a large lender based in Irvine, driving a red convertible Ferrari to work at a company that provided home loans to people with low incomes and weak credit might have appeared ostentatious, he now acknowledges. But, he says, that was nothing compared with the private jets that executives at other companies had.
“You just lost touch with reality after a while because that’s just how people were living,” said Mr. Elsayed, 42, who spent nine years at New Century before leaving to start his own mortgage firm in 2005. “We made so much money you couldn’t believe it. And you didn’t have to do anything. You just had to show up.”
Just as the technology boom of the late 1990s turned twenty-something programmers into dot-com billionaires, and leveraged buyouts a decade earlier turned Wall Street bankers into Masters of the Universe, the explosive growth in subprime lending turned mortgage bankers and brokers into multimillionaires seemingly overnight.
Now an escalating crisis in the market, which seemed to reach a new crescendo late last week, is threatening a wide band of people. Foremost are the poor and minority homeowners who used easy credit to buy houses that are turning out to be too expensive for them now that mortgage rates are going up, but the pain is also being felt widely throughout the business world.
Large companies that bought subprime lenders during the boom, like H&R Block and HSBC, are now scrambling to sell them or scale back their exposure. Many investors are also likely to suffer: Wall Street firms made billions in fees, commissions and trading revenue from packaging and selling subprime mortgages to them as bonds.
New Century has emerged as a poster child for the lenders that rode that boom to the top and are now in free fall. The company disclosed on Friday that federal prosecutors and securities regulators were investigating stock sales and accounting errors. The latter could jeopardize billions of dollars in financing for the company, which issued $39.4 billion in subprime loans in the first nine months of last year.
Weakening home prices and rising default rates have rocked the subprime business. But for those who cashed out before the market turned, the ride up was particularly sweet. The three founders of New Century, for example, together made more than $40.5 million in profits from selling shares in the company from 2004 to 2006, according to an analysis by Thomson Financial. They collected millions of dollars more in dividends, salaries, bonuses and perks.
The company said in a statement yesterday that the founders were “still significant shareholders,” noting that they collectively owned about 7 percent of the company at the end of last year.
New Century’s stock price, which seemed to mirror the trajectory of the subprime business, peaked at nearly $66 a share in December of 2004 and traded in the $40s most of last year; on Friday, it was trading at $11 a share after the market closed. In a series of sales from August to November, two of the company’s founders sold shares for an average price of about $40 a share, for a total profit of $21.4 million.
It is not known whether the stock sales by the founders are among the sales being examined by federal investigators. Some of them had been part of scheduled stock sales that are often used by executives to diversify their portfolios. But some of the sales occurred on the same day that the executives entered the plans. A New Century spokeswoman, Laura Oberhelman, said that executives declined further comment.
You can read the rest of the article by clicking here.
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