One of the first things you are supposed to learn and acknowledge when working with people is that their actions and decisions are generally situational rather than a direct reflection of their character and personality. In doing so, you can avoid a lot of hurt feelings. It can also help a person discover how a particular situation affects them personally; helping them find meaning behind experience.
If we are aware that peoples' actions usually have very little to do with us, why do we still find poor action to be so offensive? Forgetfulness, avoidance, lack of compassion - these things can all be understood within particular contexts. What about deceit? Deceit is something most people cannot understand in any type of context, mostly because the reasons for lying are usually very unclear. Sometimes people lie with good intentions; truths can be personal. Sometimes deceit occurs to protect feelings, but generally a lie hurts more than the truth ever could. Everyone's truth is a little different and maybe some people are not always ready to see what you view to be the truth.
Regardless of intentions, the worst part of a lie is discovering it. Yeah maybe the truth would hurt, but a lie just leaves you feeling confused and frustrated trying to find its necessity.
Generally speaking, I am a very forgiving person. If a person does something to hurt me most times it doesn't even take an apology to earn my forgiveness; actions speak louder than words - although apologies are nice. Empathy allows a person to put him or herself in another person's shoes and understand the outlook that caused the bad actions. Unfortunately, lying is hard for most people, including myself, to understand because honesty seems so simple. Lying is viewed as deliberate where other actions are not.
Trust is the foundation of a friendship and once that's broken, the structure cracks and crumbles. Trust and respect are very intertwined, and it is unlikely for one to exist without the other. It is not so much about the one time that someone lies; rather it is about the fact that you no longer know when he or she is not lying. Lying has the ability to void all future interactions when respect is not present anymore. When you lie to someone you are telling that person that he or she is not worth the truth, and once that value is defined there is not much to fall back on.
It is true that not all lies are meant to be hurtful, so how do you confront and recover from dishonesty? Sometimes you can't, and sometimes you can. If you've been lied to there is a lot to be said about polite confrontation - but sometimes silence speaks volumes.
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