White Lies

There's a great family story about my sister taking my nephew to the doctor when he was about four years old. They were waiting in a crowded waiting room and had been for some time. My nephew, tired of the games he'd brought with him decided to make friends in the office. He walked up to a woman and said, "You're not pretty."

Critical thinking is a family trait. However tact and diplomacy is a hard-learned skill in our family. As my sister tells the story, she sat in the waiting room pretending not to know the obnoxious child until after the aesthetically assesed woman had left, presumably in search of paper bag.

My reading is leading me to Castiglione's The Courtier, one of the first serious works in Western literature to expound the virtues of the art of hiding artifice. While to a point I have that skill, to a greater degree than many people actually realize, I've never seen the real value in it.

In my last job I was working with a vice president, who was having difficulty with a senior member of the staff. This senior staff member had some obvious talents and skills, but also was ruled by some very deep insecurities. The only way to get the maximum value from this staff member was to accommodate these insecurities. The vice president found that to be anathema to his philosophical existence. He told me about conversations he had with his fiance in which she obviously needed to be told that she was pretty and he would not give her that reassurance. He did not want to feed the insecurity. His integrity dictated that he be honest at all times, and that if he couldn't say anything nice his best course of action was to say nothing at all.

Frankly, I give the marriage -- if they even get to the altar -- a year.

While I cannot in good conscience advocate outright lying, I can say that austere honesty is grossly over rated.

When I was acting, my second show was very difficult. It was an original musical that suffered from a lot of backstage politics. It was brutal. I had a lead role, was insecure, and suffered from bad direction. Someone I greatly respected came to one of the preview performances. Afterward he said, "Your make-up looked great."

I knew the show sucked, and I knew that I wasn't good. What I really needed was for my friend to tell me that I was great. It wasn't his sincere analysis of my performance that I needed or wanted at that moment. I needed to be reassured that I would survive that turkey, that he still respected me, and that I wasn't a bad person. By refusing to tell me that I was great, he confirmed my worst fears, that I was morally corrupt hack who had just given his last performance -- ever -- and that he would no longer be associated with me. Now, on a rational level that was not the case, but at an emotionally vulnerable moment that's how a withheld reassuring comment comes across.

Oh, how I wish I was strong enough to hear what was exactly on everyone's mind, and how I could communicate every single thought and opinion, unfiltered, the moment that I have it. But the fact is, I'm not and I can't.

One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is a scene in Dangerous Liaisons in which Glenn Close tells John Malkovich how she learned self control while sitting at a dinner table, smiling serenely while digging a fork into her arm. There is such power in that ability.

I have a very readable face. I cannot hide reactions, and I cannot lie on the spot. It's this trait that allows people to believe that I'm not very bright. I wear my state of mind on my sleeve. Yet, I've discovered that there is a way to work that trait to my advantage.

Over Easter my job was becoming an unbearable hell. Everyone I was working with was fighting with everyone else, and they were all coming to me to be the peacekeeper. I needed a break.

So, one morning I got up and sent an e-mail telling them that my uncle had died and that I was in Iowa, taking care of the funeral. I sprinkled it all with details. When I came back, I'd rehearsed the story and could rattle it off effortlessly. By that point I'd decided that my relationship with those people was not going to last much longer, so I had no problem telling a blatant lie. Several weeks later I confessed to one of my colleagues. He was floored that I not only would lie, but that I could lie.

You see, the key to lying, at least for me is you either do it to protect someone you love or you lie to someone you absolutely do not respect. I guess one of the reasons I have such difficulty lying is because I am able to find something to respect in just about everyone. But I don't love enough people to lie diplomatically very often.