Why do we lie? There are billions of answers to that question, billions of reasons.

Sometimes, I think that the tendency to be dishonest lies in the paradigm, rather than solely in the person. In other words, sometimes the environment kind of forces us into a lie.

Force us into a lie?! Yes – for our safety within our “tribes.”

When my daughter was a toddler, she sucked her thumb. We were concerned, yet stupid, parents, and wanted to get her to stop. We could just see the braces bills piling up. (Spoiler alert: regardless, she’d need braces!)

So, we decided to make a deal with her. If she stopped sucking her thumb, then after a week we’d buy her the coveted blue toad stuffed animal.

She tried. By god, she tried. She was only 4 though. We, her parents, were in our thirties. We should have been smarter. (We really should have been…she wasn’t our first child!)

One afternoon, we were all watching a movie. She sat on a gigantic bean bag chair, snuggled under her favorite blanket. Next thing you know, she had covered herself completely—hiding under the blanket. And then the *doik doik doik* (thumb sucking noise). “Are you sucking your thumb” *Big Pop* “Nope!”

She lied! Our beautiful, hilarious, perfect, four year old girl FUCKING LIED TO US! Immediately, I realized, it was our fault. We were causing her to lie! She wasn’t capable of breaking the habit of thumb-sucking. She wanted to, but she was only four, after all! And then we, because we didn’t want to have to buy her braces years later, we were creating an environment where the lie was her only option. Instead of breaking the thumb-sucking fixation, we were introducing a far more dubious habit: lying!

I talked to my husband, and we agreed to let the whole thumb sucking thing go. We gave her the blue toad and we told her not to worry about thumb sucking. It was fine if she did it – no pressure, no expectations. Thankfully, lying hadn’t become a thing at that point.

But it taught me a valuable lesson: expectations, unrealistic expectations, might be the motivator for some our lies. I know this sounds obvious. But really think about it. As a parent, was I inadvertently causing my children to lie – laying the groundwork for far greater problems than whatever “expectation” I had that was supposed to prevent such problems?

I wonder if it is the same for us, adults, too? If the paradigms we are in are beyond our abilities/natures/what-have-you, so we then proverbially hide under the blankets, suck our thumbs, and then lie about it???

And then, the much more hopeful idea: are we radical enough to simply upset the paradigm – rather than succumb to failure because of an ill-informed expectation, and then lie about it?

Perhaps then, we’d stop lying so much—to others and to ourselves. If then we’d have happier, healthier lives because we didn’t have to perform, pretend, and lie.