CHAPTER 1

•

an INCONSEQUENTIAL UNTRUTH

They call it a “white lie” because we still feel pure after telling it.

For old times’ sake, you’ve been meaning to get together with Jane, a friend from your previous job, who helped you through some tough spots. But every time Jane suggests a date, you say you’re busy. You never tell her the real reason you’re always so busy. You keep it kind of quiet. You’ve been working on a book, nourishing the hope that someday you can quit your job and write full-time.

A few days ago, Jane suggested lunch at one of the old hangouts, and you finally accepted. You felt you needed to do it this time. You’re actually looking forward to it—sort of. Then, the day before your date, you get a call from a close friend who knows your passion for writing and has contacts in the publishing industry. She managed to get a meeting with a respected publisher, a lunch meeting, tomorrow!

You accept, but a sinking feeling sets in instantly. You’ve made two promises, and you can’t fulfill both. You can’t pass up this opportunity to meet an important publisher, but how are you going to tell Jane you’re canceling on her? Your mind races through the catalog of possible excuses and lands on this: “Something’s come up at work.” After all, no one argues when it comes to work. Work comes first. Everyone understands that. Of course it doesn’t feel quite right to lie, but it’s only a white lie, right?

Before you call Jane with your white lie, let’s look at the opportunity you have to drop a bad habit and create a good one: to substitute lying with truth-telling. This is a moment to reimagine integrity as a practice of keeping promises rather than avoiding embarrassment. You made a promise to Jane. She has a reasonable expectation that you will keep your promise. You now have a duty to fulfill her reasonable expectation.

Of course, there are exceptions that excuse a promise. First, emergencies can arise. Everyone understands that a car accident, a child’s sudden illness, or a crisis at work are unforeseen events that excuse the fulfillment of a promise. Even if a friend is sitting impatiently at a restaurant tapping at her smartphone, irritated or worried, she will release you from your promise after learning the facts.

Also, new circumstances may arise that require you to break a promise even when the person to whom you made it is not as understanding. For instance, you may promise a friend to take him out for a drink after he helped paint your garage, but then you learn he’s an alcoholic. You don’t want to enable conduct that could be damaging to his health, so you break that promise.

But here you are breaking a promise not because of an emergency or to avoid harm but because you got a better offer and an exciting one at that, a lot more exciting than picking over old times with a former coworker. Let’s face it: you’re throwing Jane over for a better deal, and you’re embarrassed to admit it. So, to avoid unpleasantness, you tell a white lie. “It’s just a white lie,” you tell yourself, but what you’re telling yourself is an illusion: the illusion of inconsequence.

White lying is a perfect storm of illusion. We lie to get what we want, we tell ourselves it protects the feelings of the other person, and we remain certain of the integrity of our motives. They call this kind of lie “white” because we still feel pure after telling it. This illusion manages to pass under the radar screen of self-awareness, leaving intact our self-image as persons of integrity.

But here’s the catch. In the moment you deploy the white lie, you’ve deepened the habit of deceiving others and used your moral resourcefulness to mislead them. This may strike you as a rigid and unrealistic way to deal with mundane situations, but consider what the choice really is: to treat your word as a soft expression of intention or as a sustained commitment to truthfulness.

The irony is that it would be so simple to tell the truth and ask Jane to release you from your promise. For instance:

Jane, about our date for lunch tomorrow—I realize it took a lot of time to set up, and I apologize for calling you this late. But something just came up: an opportunity to meet a publisher who may be interested in the book I’ve been working on for a long time. Would it be all right if we postpone our lunch? How about we get our calendars out right now and set another date?

If you don’t want to tell Jane about your book, then you could just say that a professional opportunity came up. That is truthfully what happened. If you’re unsure how the truth will sound when you say it, write it out first, then practice saying it out loud. I bet as you practice saying the truth to yourself, you’ll get more confident speaking it to others.

Jane may not like being thrown over no matter what the reason, but practicing integrity is not just about the impact on Jane. It is about creating a habit of truth-telling and getting better at the practice of integrity. If meeting this publisher is so important that you want to withdraw a promise you made to Jane, then it’s important enough to tell Jane the truth about it.

If you were to approach the situation in this way, it’s almost unimaginable that Jane would withhold her consent. But let’s say she did. Does the practice of integrity require you to go through with lunch? Well, actually, yes. It does. Jane’s obstinacy may confound and enrage you, forcing you to reschedule your impromptu lunch with the publisher if you can. It’s doubtful a friendship could survive such a spiteful act.

But the survival of a lingering friendship with a former colleague is not what we’re examining here. We’re aiming to create a habit of integrity. And that means following through on your promises unless you’re released. Integrity is not just about fulfilling promises but about practicing the skill of asking to be released when you no longer wish to fulfill them.

Of course, after trying to prevail upon Jane but failing, you may reach the conclusion that you’re not going to blow an important meeting just to honor the “hollow principle” of keeping a promise to a spiteful friend. If so, you may feel, rightly, that you tried everything to act with integrity; just don’t try to convince yourself that you didn’t break a promise, because you did, and that’s a breach of integrity.

But here’s the difference between what you did and what many others do. Rather than simply announcing you were pulling out, you let Jane know that your promise to her was important by asking to be released from it. You offered trust even if she rebuffed the gesture.

As for the hypothetical example of promising to take out a friend for a drink and later discovering he is an alcoholic, it is irrelevant whether he releases you. Avoiding harm to another human being is an implied promise that supersedes any explicit one. Whatever this friend might think of you for breaking your promise, as with Jane, you’ve created a habit of telling the truth, and you’ve confirmed their reasonable expectation that you would do so.

• The Law of Small Things •

When you make a promise that you later want to break, the practice of integrity requires that you ask to be released from it.