I've Had Better
Unless they're not that different at all from each other, no two people will answer the same question in the same way.
The most interesting class I took in college was taught by the most interesting teacher I ever had who asked me the most interesting question I ever heard:
Is it okay to lie?
(bothers me to this day i can't remember her name, especially since you could say she was the reason i became both a teacher & a writer)
One student, let's call him Black-and-White, immediately answered NEVER. But BW's mistake was treating it like a yes or no question.
I don't know how I came up with what I said next. It must have been the nature of the query that hinted at the complexities of life, besides my motivation to prove that a question could be more than two colors.
It was a simple scenario I posed, but one that left him stumped.
Say you had a friend whose girlfriend you knew was cheating on him. Say you knew her whereabouts and that your friend showed up to your house looking for her. Say he had a gun in his hand when he asked you where she was.
You would obviously lie to him—while hoping he wouldn't shoot you—because telling the truth in this instance would be like indirectly killing someone. Your lie would save maybe two or three lives, excluding your own.
I was able to come up with this dilemma because I didn't frame the question as "Is it okay to lie?" but "When is it okay to lie?"
•••
If you are a not a habitual deceiver, you've never had to flat-out fabricate too often in your life.
Most of the time what you're really doing is withholding the truth.
When your parents said you could tell them what was on your mind, but you thought better of it because last time they called you disrespectful. When you didn't alert the restaurant they forgot to charge you for a drink, because last time they "fixed" your mistake and said you're welcome.
Or that time the check came and the restaurant forgot to charge you for the glass of wine. You didn't say a word, remembering when the waiter brought the receipt back to you with the price of the drink back on the bill, while adding insult to injury by telling you he had "fixed" your mistake and oh, you're welcome.
No, it does not make you a dishonest person to not be honest at all times. Selective honesty just means you've learned from your mistakes. In fact, there are no 100% honest people (unless we refer to that unicorn known as the asshole). Likewise with liars—people who are merely dishonest the majority of the time.
(know who you can always be candid with? kids. i find my piano students handle the truth better than many adults. it's just that most people don't take the time to expose the flaws in their prepubescent logic and persuade them that the truth—well, their truth, one that is hopefully based on a lifetime of knowledge and wisdom—is what it is. nope, they just get the you're wrong because i'm an adult and there's nothing you can do about it so you'd better accept it, thereby ensuring these kids swallow their words well into adulthood)
•••
Withholding the truth also makes you a good businessman or businesswoman or businesswhatever.
For example, is the customer always right?
Only if you want their money.
So of course you will happily waive that late fee even though it's the fifth time and you've made multiple requests for this not to happen. No you don't bring this to their attention even though they promised to never do it again (you also have email records in case they have selective memory but question the utility of this—if you ever showed it to them they'd probably just get offended). Yes it is also your responsibility to ensure that their child is completely independent and practices piano on their own without any reminders WHATSOEVER, even though the kid is NINE and you're like NOT his PARENT and only see him THIRTY MINUTES out of an entire week.
(my father proved the exception to this rule. one of the things i remember about working at the family liquor store was that we didn't cater to anyone. he demonstrated this never turn the other cheek principle on many occasions. naturally, i followed suit. a lady brought a jug of wine to the counter, but the price tag was wrong so i said so. "well at Walmart they just give you the price on the tag no matter what." i countered, "lady, does this look like Walmart to you?" she left in a huff but returned an hour or so later, wearing sunglasses. came back to the counter with the same jug & i unsuccessfully suppressed my smirk as i rang her up. another occasion some guy complained about the prices of our cigarettes. i told him it's cheaper to quit. i actually couldn't believe it came out my mouth. at that point, it was a habit. i was relieved when he said, "yeah, guess you're right," & purchased the said cancer sticks. this is what i miss the most, a place where both you & the customer dropped the professional pretentiousness)
But do share your actual opinion, if by saying nothing your business relationship is going to deteriorate anyways. Why not launch that pigskin into the endzone?
A Hail Mary's better than nothing.
•••
When should you be truthful?
This is harder to answer because it usually does not work out in your favor (see: restaurants). Most people only want to hear, à la Bukowski, beautiful lies. But there are situations where sharing the truth does work out for you, where you derive actual payoffs.
My wife's friend comes to mind, a woman who has gotten more free drinks than I have ever paid for (i suspect it's the combination of her genetically superior facial features and borderline brash demeanor).
We were at what used to be our favorite bar in Huntington Beach (where we've never had free drinks). The waiter asked how her drink was and after some slight hesitation she responded, I've had better. She accomplished more in these five seconds of honesty than I have in five years—not only did she get a brand new cocktail, but out popped the head mixologist, a guy who hadn't looked our way all year, who then poured us complimentary shots of mezcal.
Meanwhile, you wonder if all a true craftsman wants is the real nitty gritty instead of false praise (pro tip: an artist will respect you for life once insulted).
(not to be sexist here, but a big part of me believes our friend gets away with what she does because she is female. imagine that scene from the movie Liar, Liar, the one in the elevator where Jim Carrey gives his honest answer when the woman asks him what he thought of their coital fun from the night before. reverse the genders and you wouldn't have much of a movie)
•••
Even though I know this strategy works, I am horrified by it and avoid sharing any less-than-satisfactory experiences at any time. I want people to like me, and for some reason these people happen to be strangers.
But every person has a limit, and once you've passed it, conflict becomes unavoidable.
A recent example was the episode we had with dog obedience classes (the reason why my wife wanted to go in the first place was because, this crazy guy needs training! i was the only one who wasn't surprised when Kingston then proceeded to nail every single trick in class on the first try).
The subnormal teaching skills of the instructors made it an excruciatingly boring experience. Our disappointment was further amplified by what we considered to be a hefty price tag—which had more to do with the lack of value rather than the actual cost.
So it went on until our sixth class (we had an eight-class package), at the end of which the manager finally elicited our opinion. Tension-avoiding humans that we are, we voiced our displeasure in the meekest way possible.
How about an extra class? she replied, something I'd LOVE to do for you because I THRIVE on FEEDBACK!
Somehow I wasn't thrilled by this. Instead, I felt like a whistleblower.
(i've learned to take what people say at face value until their actions confirm or disprove their statements. for example, the aforementioned manager's nervousness became immediately palpable the moment we shared our observations. from her fluttering eyelids and bursts of rapid staccato sentences, one could easily deduce that she did not, in fact, "thrive" on feedback—these suspicions were confirmed when she never followed up with us after we disappeared from the rotation)
(one more for the road: my piano student related an incident in which her school teacher told her class i am not lying to you guys when i say you are the worst class i have ever taught. and then a friend, from a different class he teaches, says she heard the exact same thing. there cannot be two worst classes sir, maybe you meant to imply that all your students are equally terrible? there's also another possibility that would likely never be considered, that it's not the students who are terrible but you)
•••
Besides my unhealthy need for social approval, the other reason I have a hard time speaking up is that it feels like some glitch in the Matrix.
If you're just going about living your life, you're not going to thank someone for unplugging you—it's more likely that you'll plug right back in at the next opportune moment.
It's easier to act like something never happened, rather than fundamentally dismantle and rebuild your entire belief-system from the ground up.
Change is hard. You need the truth in order to grow and this can be extremely unpleasant. Besides, you can never directly alter a person yourself. Sometimes not even God can. It's like that saying that you can only bring a horse to water, but the horse doesn't even notice the water because it doesn't realize it's thirsty in the first place.
The truth is not something that "sets you free." It's more like some dark, floating entity which forces you to continually question your beliefs, which then makes you doubt the essence of who you really are.
If you're lucky, you only have to experience this uncomfortable growth one time. But if you're like me, you are forevermore bearing the brunt of transformation head-on. It is the continuous cycle of developing a brand new identity after discovering your current one has been false all along.
Rinse, repeat.
It is no joke to say this feels like you are literally dying over and over again to be birthed as an entirely different individual.
•••
As evident as denial of self-truth may be, it gets even uglier when it comes to real world.
Messengers get shot and we turn a blind eye.
But the silence doesn't earn you free drinks—it hides what is being done to children. So we act like crabs in a bucket because things brought to light are too sickening to fathom.
Yet even if you try to bring attention to these atrocities, the media controls the narrative—there's nothing going on in Gaza, you're just an anti-semite (and Epstein killed himself).
Mostly you're just ignored.
But when you're not—and stand to lose a lot more than what most of us have combined—it takes moxie, courage, each ball the size of the moon in order to keep speaking out on things that have been happening ever since anyone can remember.
It takes someone like Nassim Taleb repeating himself until he is hoarse.
Here's a man who shouted into the void before most of the world knew his name. And he'll keep on doing it because he cares more about truth and humanity than he does his own life.
I shudder at the thought of a post-NNT world.
•••
