The other evening, Brittany and I returned to the scene of the crime; the opposite side of the lake, from where we could watch the sun go down.
It had been a grueling work day and I think we both needed the same restoration by the time five o’clock hit.
She gathered her hoola hoop and I my camera and while I promised not to take any shots of her, I had already broken that promise in my head by the time we were half-way there.
I prefer non-posed, candid shots anyway, so the less she knew about my plans, the better. Her unwinding involved setting up her music and working through her paces with one or both of her hoops and while I feigned a set-up that made it seem I was shooting the sunset, I had skillfully set myself up so that she was the unwitting silhouette in many of my shots.
Yes, I have been known to lie once in a while … but always in a good cause. But as someone once said “it is better to seek forgiveness, thank to seek permission” … so forgive me, Brittany!
By the time I had begun to capture the sun and the hooper, I was also being treated to the appearance of many other “extras” in my deceptive screenplay. There were the Ospreys and Herons of course along with many of their noisy neighbors that were either circling the skies looking for one last meal of the day, or setting up nest for their night.
But I was also treated to the sight of a speed boat racing by our little pier and then a sea-plane that landed in time for me to catch it in a worthwhile shot or two.
I hope you like the selection that I have put together at the end of this little blog.
So, the whole concept of a white lie began to play out in my head as I started to pull these images together and while I don’t doubt she knew that my promise was worth about as much as the paper it was written on, I was allowed to carry off my charade without being made to account for my transgressions.
Lies are peculiar little things .They range from an innocent “look what the Tooth Fairy left you” to the more onerous “Wasn’t me” that Shaggy made a hit of some years back.
Lies permeate every aspect of our lives. From the moment we tell her that dress looks wonderful on her, to where she tells us we’re the best lover she ever had.
We lie in interviews. We lie to our parents. We lie to our children.
We will even back up a friend on their lie, if it feels right at the time.
Hell, we even knowingly elect liars as our leaders.
Hitler wrote “if you tell a big enough lie, and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed!” which is a good preface to why propaganda is such a useful tool in life.
We hear so many lies from within our most-inner circles, to the widest spectrum of news, that it is almost impossible not to believe some of it.
I mean, we all heard with our own ears this tic-tac popping, pussy grabbing, misogynist tell us we didn’t hear what we think we heard. And there were enough believers out there to bring him within 3 million votes of the real winner.
And then, we all stood by and let them tell us that the person with the least amount of votes was actually the winner and that we live in a democracy.
But the politics of lies is merely a symptom of how we treat lies within our personal lives and even within ourselves. Because we have conditioned ourselves into thinking that lies are ok, we accept them as an OK behavior.
From the moment our children are born, we lie to them. We tell them about Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, and Easter Bunny. We tell them to do good things and good things will happen to them. We tell them that hard work will be rewarded with success.
And don’t forget, from the moment we were born, our parents lied to us too!
Lies form the basis of so much of our interactions and to a flawed species that can prove disastrous.
When we allow lies to console us that the planet is really ok, that we haven’t polluted things too much, that global warming is just a myth created by China, that we aren’t spitting out too many babies for our planet to be able to actually support … this is where the lie comes home to roost.
With morals long gone, the only real brake on our train of lies is the eventual wall that derails it and brings us to a final resting place.
I am already ancient, so will likely be long gone by the time the wheels leave the track, but I feel desperately sad for our children and their children … sad that they believed all our lies.
