What is it about telling the truth which we fear so much?

Yesterday, I received an sms from one of my student’s parent. He was telling me that the child is not able to attend class as the grandfather is really sick in JB and they are on the way to visit him. I’d arranged for a make up class with the student and today earlier, the child came for lesson. So, I asked, “How’s your grandfather?” The child looked up and said, “I went to JB to shop. We did not see my grandfather.”

Oh ok.

So, I was thinking, whatever the reason was for telling the lie, you and me.. we are all guilty of telling white lies every now and then. And there we go all the time, expecting children to tell us nothing and nothing but the truth. “Be honest,” we say.

We tell lies when we do not want to attend a function we are invited to,
“Oh, I am not well.” or “I already have another appointment”
Why cant we simply say, “Im sorry. I do not feel like going”
Basically, the truth.

Maybe because, when we tell the truth, we fear hurting the other party’s feelings or we fear receiving a negative response from the person and we do not want to deal with that. So, we lie.

Does that make the truth ugly? Does that mean that by lying, it makes things better?

In that case, then we can say that the truth often hurts. And so, we lie.