By Samantha Werkheiser
Editor-in-Chief

Sometimes telling the truth can be one of the hardest things you can do in life, but it is also one of the most important things you can do.

Lying to others to protect their feelings is never wise because it means that the relationship is no longer based in truth.

People tend to think white lies are harmless, like telling your girlfriend you like her ugly dress or telling your professor you forgot an assignment on your desk at home when you just didn’t do it at all.

These are lies that protect yourself and other people’s feelings, but they can be harmful nonetheless.

It can harm you because you’re not expressing your honest feelings or thoughts, and it can hurt the other person if they ever find out that you were lying to them. Telling a lie takes effort to think of, and the work doesn’t always end there.

Often times, a person will have to keep up with the charade and continue the lie in order to keep the other person or people from discovering the truth.

I know that the truth isn’t always the fun, or easy option, but it deserves to be told.

Sure, the other person may be upset or disappointed, but at least they know how things actually are. By telling other people the truth, you are also giving them a fairer chance to react to it. “Treat others how you would like to be treated” rings true in this case as well.

I don’t want to be lied to, and I would think most people wouldn’t prefer to be lied to either. If you’d rather be lied to than hear a hard truth, that is another issue in and of itself.

One of the other very dangerous things you can do besides lying to other people, is lying to yourself. I have done this many times throughout my life, and it never ended well. I would convince myself that everything in my life was perfectly fine, even though I knew deep down that it wasn’t.

Instead of taking the steps I needed to take to fix things, I took the easy way out and let things be.

I failed myself in this aspect and I knew that I had actually made my life harder in the long run by doing so. If I had acknowledged the truth of the situation, I would have been able to fix things before they had gotten bad.

I’ve found that your life becomes easier with the more truths you tell.

You and the other people around you deserve the truth, don’t take it away from yourself and them.

Email Samantha at:
swerkheis4@live.esu.edu