MCLEODS, New Brunswick, April 14, 2024 – There are two kinds of people: those who use words to convey meaning, and those who hide behind words, using them as a weapon or a strategy.

The first kind of people are truthtellers and the second kind are liars.

The funny thing about truthtellers and liars is that they don’t always identify as such, even to themselves. I have met truthtellers who speak the truth because they can’t conceive of not speaking the truth. The alternative doesn’t even occur to them. I have also met liars who lie as a matter of course, without thinking twice about it. They don’t consider words as strategies or weapons; they just lie because that’s who they are.

For the most part, the world is full of liars. Better said, the world is peopled by liars. Liars by far form the vast majority of the population no matter where you go. Some (surprisingly few) lie knowingly and with intent, but most do it without even realizing they’re doing it (or thinking that what they’re doing is in any way wrong), since lying is the currency they trade in, and they’re good at it. It comes naturally to them. The world is conceived, built, greased, and rolls on lies.

Me, I had learn this the hard way, about the way things are. I’m a born truthteller and a terrible liar, though I occasionally tried lying on for size as a child as a way to wiggle out of tight spots. I wasn’t very good at lying, though some still believed me, or at least feigned believing me. I found it was all in how you stare them steadily in the eyes while you stumble for the right words or what you think are the right words, daring them not to believe you. Now, in hindsight, I understand that people accepted my lies not because they actually believed me but because taking what I said at face value was easier than trying to get to the bottom of things.

Liars are lazy. Truth requires constant self-adjustment, like a tuning, every day, several times a day. It takes effort. Lying simply adjusts around you so that you can stay exactly as you are, looking past truth as if it doesn’t exist or has no more merit than lies. Most people go through life lying not because they have a character flaw but because they’re born that way. You’re either born a liar or you’re born a truthteller. You don’t become one or the other through circumstances: You remain the same from birth to death and beyond.

Liars surround themselves with liars the way that birds of a feather flock together. Truthtellers tend to be individualistic, wandering from one flock to next in search of – what? Another truthteller? You might as well pan for gold in a septic tank. Your chances of success will be greater.

Surely it can’t be that bad. Surely I’m just making this up as a way to explain away the hurt. I have seen smile after smile of sympathy, the feigning of empathy, when the mind is a million miles away, planning supper. You can only say so much to most people, and that I had to learn. The hard way.

Let us talk about the weather (but not about weather modification). Let us talk about beliefs (but not about God). Let us talk about the future (but not about death, never about death and certainly never about what comes after death). Steer toward the middle of the liar freeway and you’ll be OK. You’ll be fine. Just, whatever you do, don’t mention (the unmentionables).

I have found it is better to live alone than to live with liars. This, too, I had to learn the hard way.

I’m still learning.