Lie

I was batting in on the beach cricket.  There were three of us.  I hit the ball over the enclosure fence (like down to third man).  There were plenty of runs to be had while someone retrieved the ball.  The guy standing over the wickets had been waiting patiently and then he gestured frantically to throw the ball.  I took off for a run from the far end.  He had the ball the whole time.  He ran me out.  Too easy.  Man did I feel like a dill.
I need to be careful as lies can get me too easily.  I guess I was not brought up to lie. I know I would make a terrible liar anyway.  I would find it too hard to remember the web I had spun, and what I had said to who.
The beach cricket thing was blatant, but I find half truths way worse.  Often I can pick something said that has some truth but is a lie.  But as Alfred Lord Tennyson said. “A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.”
I guess it is right that I do, but my tendency is to trust until proven otherwise.  Working with figures our motto was “act like everyone is honest and build systems supposing that everyone is dishonest.”  I reckon that is a fairly safe strategy.  Although I always give everyone the benefit of the doubt, experience has shown me that not everyone is honest.  Often that is only revealed late.
Unfortunately, the best system in the world does not potentially leave me with egg on my face.  What can make things worse is that I can lose so much before I discover the scam.  The best I can often do is learn from it and move on.
Lying to me can be more than my uttering a verbal untruth.  I can lie by my actions.  I purport to be one thing and I am another.  Makes me think of Operation Fortitude by the Allies in World War two.  To disguise where the Normandy invasion was to take place the allies built a false camp by night to deceive the German aircraft.  It sure looked like an encampment but the truth was it was just cardboard cut outs.  Worked a treat.
I can be a cardboard cut-out.  Look the part but not be the part. Eventually I am found out.  It may take forty years, but it will happen.  I so often wonder when people confess they are sorry, do they mean for the act of for being caught.  I do not know there is anything more binding than self-deception.
I reckon there is a lot of deception around these days.  It feels like the media tell me a half truth to push their agenda.  Often it seems to be a case of “if at first you don’t succeed try, try try again.”  The flow seems to be resistance, tolerance, acceptance.  It is no wonder Vladimir Lenin said, “a lie told often enough becomes the truth.”   Sometimes the best way to win a battle is to wear the opposition out.
I know I need to stay on my guard.  Too often the easiest way is the line of least resistance.  Unfortunately, that way often leads to a trap.  JFK said some interesting things.  “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”
As Simon and Garfunkel sang “still a man hears, what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”