“Cunning leads to knavery. It is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery. Only lying makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery.”~ Ovid
In Aesop’s Fable, the boy who cried wolf involved himself in a selfish game of lying had eventually turned into a disaster when a wolf finally did show up and destroyed everything. Naturally the moral of the story was that in the end, liars will never be believed in again.
When we tells lies, we damage the trust and faith that other people have in us. As we continue to lie, there comes a time where those around us will just stop believing in us. They will stop listening to us. And really- who could blame them? Especially if those lies that were told to us caused a significant amount of damage in some way or another.
So then what happens after we stop listening to the liars?
Well first off, congratulations for being strong enough to stand up to that person who had been deceiving you all this time. It isn’t that easy! But then we start over and we say that we “learned our lesson”. We now know that we cannot trust that person because more times than not, they would lie to us again and again if we gave them the opportunity to do so. Even if we confront them with their behavior and tell them, “You are a liar!”, and then they solemnly admit to it… that’s not really going to stop them from doing it again.
But for others, they may now know that they cannot trust or have any faith in the person who had done them wrong by lying. And the sad fact of the matter is that now their faith and trust in all of mankind is gone.
I would never condone anyone to put up with somebody who constantly was damaging people by lying.
I watched over the past few years two friends in which the relationship had been destroyed by manipulation and lies. The one who was being lied to finally saw the “truth”, and walked away. Ultimately ending the friendship for good. But that person who had been burned, carried that sense of damage with them into future relationships. They simply will not allow themselves to trust another person.
I think that we all can agree that we would not blame that person for not trusting again in the same way. That person’s life has been forever changed. And the unfortunate side of this particular story is that this person refuses to even try to trust anyone else after being burned.
I do not believe that is fair.
There’s a saying that if you fall off the horse, you should get right back on it again. Loosely paraphrased.
Yes, you are hurt, angry, and upset. And it will take some time to get over it. But do you think that it is really fair that because someone else had done you wrong, that you should automatically start to believe that everyone else will too?? Absolutely not!
There is no good or real reason why you should live the rest of your life with your walls up. Because you will never find what good there is on the other side.
Let me repeat myself: Nobody would ever blame you for not wanting to trust the person who had or who has been hurting you.
And yet, to make the choice to believe that because one person did it, the world is going to as well, is nothing short of unfair and untrue.
There have been many times where I have discussed the hardships that I have dealt with in life because of this. I have mentioned them frequently throughout this blog. And I suppose that this blog post shall be no different. Many times have I talked about the hardships of finding someone interesting and then trying to get to know that person, only to have them shut me out because I posess some kind of similar trait to those who had previously harmed them. Which was something that I could never have known without being told personally. And therefore, I struggle to show that “I’m not like the others.” And many times I have come across those who are just cemented in their own thoughts that I can never show them what they need to see. So I end up hurt because I was never really given a chance in the first place.
You can take some kind of wisdom out of one of these two phrases:
Life is unfair.
Shit happens.
People are full of inaccuracies. That is how we were made. But allowing someone else’s faults to rule how we live our own lives after the fact that damage has been done doesn’t become fair to anyone else, not even to yourself!
We cannot stop people from lying. We cannot stop people from manipulating. But what we can do is know that each person is quite different from the other. And so how would you know, if you don’t give that next person a real chance?? We can stop trusting in those who lie to us, but we can give that new person a chance.
We do not have to put up with anyone’s behavior if we do not want to. That is the freedom of our choice. Masking the fact that everyone else is the same, becomes nothing but another lie. And this one you have told to yourself.
We can take the lessons that we did learn from the previously ending relationship and apply them. Once we start to actually see a pattern within that next person that is similar to the one we just ended all bonds with, THEN it might be time to stop and think about whether or not the two are having anything in common. It’s not fair to be quick to judge this though.
Those who have abused us, ruin it for the rest of the world in so many ways during so many times. We’ve got to really ponder about this.
Just because I wear red constantly, or black- does that mean that all people who are in wheelchairs also wear red and/or black?
A man found that his wife was cheating on him. He caught her in the act and then divorced her. He was smart enough to know that the relationship needed to end. But he was also foolish enough to think that ALL WOMEN are cheaters.
Do you finally get what I am saying?? Is this man’s perception of women valid and fair? Of course not!
That same man never married again. He never even bothered to date or meet new people. Needless to say that the rest of his life, he was quite miserable. He believed in the lie that he told to himself that all women cheat. And therefore he never allowed the opportunity for happiness through companionship in his life, and it caused him to be lonely and bitter. He should have taken his time to get over the pain of the loss, and moved on. He never knew what possibilities of better fulfillment through the companionship of another female could be like.
Let’s stop judging one another. Take the time to heal and then let’s get back to life as we once knew it. Don’t go on existing with closed doors and high walls around you.
Be strong and know when enough is enough. And also start over with a clean slate and a fresh mind and do not fall into the traps that everything is always the same.
Dambreaker 