The Truth In Lies

Some people say that I exaggerate. Some say that I lie. My second ex-wife used to say that I would lie when the truth would do just fine. And she was right. The truth might have been just fine, but then again it is often not very interesting, nor very funny.

It was Mark Twain who famously said When in doubt, tell the truth. But you see, the trick is to avoid being in doubt.

A lie can be a window to another world, whereas the truth is restricted to what is factual, what is known. A lie can also be a route to the sort of truths that try to hide.

Consider the work of fiction, for instance. Was there ever, in truth, an Ishmael, a Pequod, an Ahab, a white whale? No . . . and yet how else shall we make our way to the truths that lie beneath the surface of the fictitious voyage than to believe in the lie, the ship, that conveys us? What truth can the white whale sound to the depths other than the truth of the lie?

How great would the Great Gatsby be if he were a matter of fact, a two column piece in the business section of the New York Times?

I was sitting once in a bar, back in my drinking days, when a man of like age sat down beside me. It happened that I was wearing an old army coat I had gotten at the Goodwill. Because of this--a hint, an invitation--the man asked whether I had served in Vietnam.

Yes, I said.

And though I had not served, and though this was a bald faced lie, it turned out that I learned more of essence, of truth about the Vietnam War that night that I had ever before learned in a newspaper or a history book--so that now, in some way, I have been there--Yes, with the 1st Marines at Khe San, at the airbase in Danang, in the rice paddy where the water buffalo had stepped on a mine.

We shared an experience within the character of common humanity--he was a veteran, I was a drunk, and we had both been injured in a war.

My mother used to say that life itself is a lie, an illusion. And it is, so it is.

For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.
--Heb 13:14