MASQUERADE

DO I SPEAK TRUTH?

Or, is what I think and speak just personal preference that I like to think is truth, and I am playing make believe with myself. How can I know? By doing the difficult work of honestly challenging myself. How? By writing down what I think, then telling myself, “That may be false”.

Then I must put forth the best argument I can for the falsehood of what I think. Try it. It is not easy. Oh, it’s easy to pretend that you are “oh so honestly challenging yourself”, but we play games with ourselves just as we do with others. Yes, you do, and so do I, unintentional though it may be.

We hide behind “good intentions”. Our games begin with ourselves. The most believable liar is the one who most convincingly lies to himself, over and over, until he is convinced that what he wants to believe is really truth. He believes it. After enough of this, the expert liar comes to believe that if he believes something, then by virtue of his belief, it must be true. No doubts.

Even a superficial observation of the most prolific liar of our times reveals this pattern. You know who I’m talking about. If you don’t know, it would do no good for me to tell you, and you would stop reading here if I named him.

Observe him. He may start out knowing he is lying, but he also knows if he keeps it up, even he will come to believe his lies, and die (or kill) to defend those lies. Following a life of lies, it takes no work at all for him to quickly believe if he says it, it is true.