Is honesty really the best policy? I have to admit, I lie often. My most recent lie was about staying over at my mom’s house for the night, when really, I drove two hours to Marquette University to spend time with my friends. It wasn’t a tragic lie, but I told my dad and grandmother a whole other story. In all honesty, they would panic and never allow me to go. My family is very strict and with any “bad” I do, I get punished and the trust is lost.

I have always known that I was a liar. Maybe not a frequent one, but I do take advantage of any opportunity to lie. I notice that my social lies have helped me preserve friendships. I am not going to tell my friend that their sense of style is unappealing, because they would never talk to me. Instead, I say that they look great to boost their confidence. It lightens up their mood and it helps me maintain the friendship. I know that it is morally wrong to be dishonest, but with honesty, it will create more conflicts among relationships. Without these little white lies, there would be no such thing as friends, love, or anything for that matter.

Facial expressions always play a huge role when it comes to lying. I went through a stage where all I could do was smile and say that everything would be okay when in reality, I cried inside, and would plead for help. Besides protecting others, it can also be turned into a philosophical concept. This specific fact makes lying more reasonable because using facial expressions is the only thing that helps someone get through a certain situation at the moment. It helps us readers understand that lying is a type of self-deception, that it is not used to hurt others, but rather to help us create another world for ourselves. By that, I mean that sometimes the truth hurts and by lying to ourselves it makes us happy because we are covering up the pain. Those protective lies also turn out to be something positive, because they are not for personal gain, but because it is also the best for that person they are lying to. I feel that lying is wrong when you put yourself first before others, but in this case it brings hope to people. Not everyone would dare to say that they are living with a poor health condition or will die soon. Instead, you want to replace that with hope and say that they are somewhat stable. It is harsh and morally wrong to be brutally honest like that. I learned that these are scenarios when lying is justified.

So at the end, there's trust and lying. Are they the most important things here, or is it the guilt that you end up feeling at the end? Sure, you have lied to a peer or family member and they bought it, but at the end it is how you felt about what you did. Do you forgive yourself? Do you feel guilt within yourself? In the end, your lies affect you, not the people that surround you. Because of our society, the changes in our world, they all push someone towards the world of falseness. I like to say that the world itself is to blame for, because something has to trigger us to lie. There has to be a root in lying. Lying is morally wrong but it just proves who we have become.