CONFESS: THE TRUTH OR I LIE?

“Tell me the truth!” We have so often been told. Girlfriends yell at their boyfriends. “Tell me the truth! Did you sleep with her? Just tell me, I wont get hurt, I just want to know!”. But is it really worth it to tell the truth everytime you hear that line? I can hear you say yes, the truth sets you free. Oh yeah, bosses tell their employees to confess whether they did their work, or skipped a work day. Teachers ask students if they really are the ones who did the homework. Wives demand the truth from their husbands about some SMS they have read, parents ask the children who ate the cookies. All claim they wont get hurt, but the moment you say, “yes, I did it, your worst fears are confirmed,” you either get a screaming “how can you sleep with such trash?” or a slap, or a yell, or a suspension letter, a combination of all of the above, or for kids, a beating that lasts longer than the taste of stolen cookies.

Why do people ask to be told the truth then sulk for the next whole week? There you were, separated from your galfriend after which she swore she never wants to see you again. You try another relationship and it fails, and voila, she too doesn’t succeed in whatever relationship she tried. Three months later you are back together again. There is that confession session where you are supposed to tell all you did. You think you said everything but you are hounded by the major question: “Did you see anyone else all this time?” which basically means did you sleep with another? You dodge the question but when she says “Just tell me the truth, so I know, I wont get hurt” for the seventieth time, you say “yes I did.” Her cheeks drop. She rises from the couch to the kitchen and scrubs all utensils dry, dirties them and washes them again and again (or catches the next bus home) You call: are you ok? Yes, I am she says. But you know her well enough, you know the tone isn’t the one she uses when everything is OK. A day later she is like tell me who it is. You learnt your lesson the first time, so you refuse to divulge the details, saying “it was nothing really, we were just stupid and it happened.” “Tell me, I won’t get hurt” Oh no, once bitten twice shy, so you dodge. Tactics change. “If you really believe we are lovers we shouldn’t hide anything between us, and furthermore si it was in the past? Unless you will do it again? No? OK then, tell me who it is, just do” You blurt the name. Oh no, it is the local loose-pants you had something with one reckless night when hormones raged. “Who? That? How could you!” you are shouted at and screamed at. Or if you are even unluckier and your friend is the emotional-hostage taker, she goes silent and doesn’t talk for the next three days. Everytime you ask is anything wrong you are met with a “I am ok, nothing is wrong” and you soon become a mental wreck, trying to figure out what she is thinking, feeling so guilty why you confessed and worse why you sinned, (which is actually what she wants you to go through as punishment) until you almost go mad.

For all those who want to be told the truth, be ready to face it. If not, don't ask. Why demand a truth just to pain yourself? Maybe it is not so wise to confess after all, despite what most people say ati I better be told the truth coz then I won’t get mad. When you refuse to tell the truth, you haven’t lied, you just haven’t told it all. Case in point: Voltaire, the electrical genius, once refused to confess to a priest saying his bible doesn’t have anything like that. The priest quickly showed him one of those letters of Paul where it says “confess to one another”. So Voltaire sat down and confessed to the priest. After he was through, he told the priest to sit on the chair he had sat on, then Voltaire went to the other side of the screen and told the priest “Now Confess! The bible verse says let us confess to ONE ANOTHER, not just one person only!” The scandalised priest of course refused. Maybe he knew confessing, or telling ‘it all’, isn’t really the best thing.

To say the truth or not to say, that is the question now. Whether it is nobler still to suffer, the pains and arrows of life’s outrageous fortune.