When I was eight and my mom was on a spirituality quest, she took us to a bunch of new churches to try out—a new one every weekend.
One day, forced to introduce myself to yet another Sunday school, I blurted out, “Sarah!” In the eighties the name Grace was a rare throwback, so my name brought a lot of unwanted attention—especially in a church setting.
My lie caught up to me in the parking lot when one of the kids waved and shouted “Bye, Sarah!” My mom glanced over, confused. I knew we weren’t going back again, so I just shrugged.
That’s one of the few outright lies I remember telling because I learned pretty quickly—lying is not for lazy people.
Lying requires pretense, and pretense is time-consuming. It adds to your mental load, forcing you to project forward into time and imagine how things will play out. It requires assessing your circumstances and adjusting your approach appropriately. Maybe you have the bandwidth for all that, but as someone with ADD who is already constantly over-processing everything around me, I really just… can’t.
And you know what? I’m grateful.
I’ve lived long enough to know plenty of liars—big ones, small ones, bad ones, silly ones—and in every case the lying parties are making their lives more difficult. They do it because in their minds, they HAVE to. They don’t believe they’re good enough, without embellishing the truth.
Deciding you’re not enough is awfully time-consuming.
Sitting in your truth, on the other hand, is super easy. No thinking about it, no remembering what you’ve already said so you can stay consistent.
You only have to be, and then be truthful.