what i learned from earnest..

"the truth is rarely pure and never simple"

the quote above is by Oscar Wilde.. a quote from the importance of being earnest. i read this book/play last month and this quote is what i took from it. although the short sentence was just a line somewhere at the beginning of the book, it stuck with me. 

i feel like i have always thought about truth and lies as black and white. truths are easy and simple. lies are difficult and complex. truths are fact. lies are fiction. truths can be proven, backed up and/or referenced. lies have to be rehearsed and memorized, they are created, staged and/or planned. 

lies seem like so much effort.. so why do people so often choose not to tell the truth? .. because the truth isn't pure and simple. the truth is filled with facts and necessary explanations. it is filled with love and so often with hurt. truth is filled with emotion. truth is powerful and so often misunderstood. truth can ruin people, it can cause tears and harm... truth may be stable but it is very complex.

i believe that often the truth makes people so uncomfortable that lies seem like the better option. you make up a piece of information, more likely than not a piece of information the communicator believes the receiver wants to be presented with. the information is invented.. easy. our brains do that in seconds. but really..when we make a decision, i believe people exhibit an immediate fight or flight response. 

lies are simple, they can be devised in a matter of seconds.. do it.

truth.. complicated..causing anxiety. run.

so we run. we tell the lie instead of the truth. lies just seem so much easier to do. although truth is fact and therefore should be more easily stored in our brains, it is so not pure and definitely not simple.