Shameeka Choice
English 131
Dr. Jordan

Lying is not always healthy

Lying to a person of any age could truly cause harm mentally and psychically, based on the lie being told. Do you realize by telling a child he/she is adopted could put him/her at risk of everything he/she truly believes in? The consequence of constructing a lie can result in various kinds of loss. One of the most destructive types of lies which can lead to loss is one of omission in which important details are not communicated. A situation in which omission led to horrific consequences can be seen in the lives of adopted siblings Shameeka and David. After their mother died giving birth to David, the children were separated into two different families. Although the siblings were separated Shameeka and David always keep in touch with each other. When David turned five the kids stopped seeing each other, once he was twelve years of age; Shameeka and David saw each other again for the first time. David told Shameeka about how depressed and suicidal he was because his foster family had began telling him that it was all his fault that his mother had passed, he began to listen to these lies and even worst he began to believe the lies.
Although Shameeka and David’s mother did past after giving birth to David, his family left out the very important detail that the siblings mother did have cancer and it was so strong that the doctors didn’t think it would have been a good idea for the mother to give birth but she didn’t care she wanted to bring her baby boy into the world. Not telling David this important detail, he couldn’t handle the lies being told to him, so he decided to commit suicide early that Thursday morning. Most people do not realize how far a lie can go if part of the story is not told. Seeing how far tragic things can get when important facts are left out of a story, there is another lie that can be considered dangerous as well. A white lie which is told to compliment feelings can cause a person to loss respect with people which can be seen in this example; “oh my God Susie that dance was amazing I felt like I wanted to cry it was so good” says Ebony, then she whispers to friend “That dance was terrible she really can not dance good at all, I hated it” this example is of a Ebony telling Susie that her dance she performed in class was so good that it almost made her cry although the Ebony didn’t like the dance at all, but she knew that by telling Susie that the dance was ugly it would have hurt her feelings really bad. So to spare Susie’s feeling being hurt Ebony told a white lie to make Susie feel good. The reason that this is not a good thing to do is because if someone else came up to Susie and told her that her dance was terrible Susie would have gotten mad at Ebony and lost all respect for Ebony for lying to her. This also could have made Susie lose some of her self-esteem, because Ebony set it high when she told her she was a good dancer, and now she may think that she’s not a good dancer anymore. When telling a white lie it is important that the liar is conscious of what the outcome could result in even if telling it to a single individual or a group of people. Having a certain idea/opinion of a different person or group based off of things you’ve heard about them would be considered stereotyping that person or group. Many stereotypes are told daily (Girls only become homosexual because the last guy that she dated did her wrong. Homosexuals are not loved by God and will end up in hell. African Americans that live outside of the United States are poor. Men like sports, and women like shopping. African Americans only eat chicken, waffles, watermelon, and red Kool-Aid. All males that dance are homosexuals) All of these examples are different stereotypes. Stereotypes could build a lot of anger in a person as well as make someone lose trust and/or self-love. Someone would find anger because he/she would get tired of hearing these lies all the time and of the people who are ignorant to the things they don’t know or understand, because those are the people who would believe these stereotypes before learning the truth. People involved in these stereotypes would end up losing self-love because he/she will always want to feel accepted but never will because if a person is once again ignorant to something he/she don’t understand he/she would try his/her best to stay away from the unknown. This would make the stereotype person feel like no one loves his/her and he/she will feel alone all the time, which would cause him/her to become very depressed, and once depressed he/she began to lose love for his/her self along as the love any and everybody or thing else. A lie that a lot of people may often think is the most harmful could be the out and out lie which is just a flat out lie, when most of the times people don’t consider the consequence. An out and out lie would be when a mother sees the sprinkles on her son face and she ask him did he eat the ice cream she told him not to eat and he telling her that he didn’t eat the ice cream but she knows that he did because all of the evidence is on his face, he just lied to her so that he could try to get out of trouble and the consequence for him doing so would result in him getting a whooping from lying to his mother. Another example of an out and out lie would be if a teacher told the class to go see an exhibit for class as an assignment but Jeff didn’t go to the exhibit because he wanted to go to the football game, so when the teacher asked Jeff if he went to the exhibit Jeff lied and said yes when all along the teacher saw Jeff at the game but Jeff didn’t see his teacher, so the teacher told Jeff to write a paragraph about the exhibit in class but Jeff couldn’t do it so the consequence of him lying to get out of trouble resulted in him receiving an failing grade on the assignment while the entire rest of the class received a passing grade. Out and out lies are often told with hopes of not having consequences to follow them. While some people tell obvious bold out and out lies, others put on facades to disguise the truth. Facades are used to help people portray another person he/she are not usually because he/she aren’t comfortable with themselves or want to fit in with others, consider Danielle’s mask in the following scenario. Danielle comes from a well organize family where she has a mother and father and both of the parents treat Danielle with the best parenting skills, she even gets pretty much anything she asks for, but when Danielle when to college all of her friends in the crew she hangs with has single parents and they don’t get everything that he and she wants, Danielle wanted to fit in and have things in common as the rest of the teenagers so she puts on a facade as if she comes from a single family household as well just so that she will fit in with her friends. Putting on a facade for people will cause you to either gain respect the wrong way from them believing the lies he/she told. Or losing friendships with people, because once a person finds out that he/she lied about the person that he/she was portraying to be that particular friend or group of friends may not want to be friends with the lair anymore. Facades can also go so far that a person loses who he/she really is, because by portraying to be someone that you are not for so long can cause him/her to forget the things he/she likes or love.
Lying isn’t always bad but it isn’t always good either because there are many consequences that can come along with the different lies that are told whether it is an omission, white lie, stereotype, out and out, or a facade, and they can result in various ways of loss as seen in the ones previously stated.