I don’t care for the truth. I can’t handle the truth…

Hello. My name is Patrick…and I’m a Jim Carrey fan. It started almost 13 years ago when I watched a movie about a pet detective who I now recognize as an obnoxious coke head. I didn’t think it was a problem until I started looking up showtimes for Fun with Dick and Jane. I knew I needed serious help when I considered going to an afternoon matinee of Jim’s dramatic work in The Number 23, even after reading countless reviews that defecated on it.

I know I’m not alone. People have confided their admiration for Jim to me late at night. After all the beer is gone and we’ve spent an hour or two searching through youtube for one last great clip someone might mention Jim Carrey. Sometimes they’ll bring up a movie like Liar Liar with pride, but most of the time someone will say “see if they have any clips from Liar Liar, I love that movie”. And they don’t say it in the same way they say they love something acceptably unique like Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. No, they say it half expecting to shout “just joking” if no one agrees right away.

For those of you strong enough to proclaim your love for Liar Liar, I’m there with you in solidarity. Seriously, the movie’s funny. Period. Sure it’s corny, overacted and the redemption plot line is so sickly sweet that you’re half hoping for the kid to get his hair caught in an airline engine, but I’ll defend that movie any day. I still think this is as funny as any scene in cinematic history.

I laugh every time I think of the line “you’ve met (his wife) at the Christmas parties. She’s the one that get’s plastered and calls him a retard”. Gold. Comedy gold.

Obviously, for me, one of the reasons I enjoy that movie so much is because of Jim Carrey (Come on…this clip is brilliant and no one could do this better than Jim Carrey. Ray Romano? Chris Rock? Nope.). The other reason I liked Liar Liar is because of the basic premise. It proves that lying is such an engrained and accepted part of our lives that NOT LYING is a fantastical idea for an outrageous comedy. “Just hear me out. What would happen if you couldn’t lie? You’d be fucked, right?”

I like lying. I do it every day. The good news is that my lies are known as “white lies”. Ask me what I had for breakfast. Would you believe oatmeal? How bought cantaloupe? Does it really matter?

Like most people who define their actions as “the exception to the rule” my white lies are harmless and for the most part necessary. However, claiming lying is necessary isn’t easy since we were taught lying is wrong from day one.

The first day a child is taught the difference between right and wrong, they are told honesty is right and lying is wrong. Who decided this? For some reason people think honesty is the best policy. They think they will be able to move along in their lives just dealing with the truth at all times. It’s not a surprise. We all want to be believe someone when they say “this is a great report” and not wonder if they mean it.

However, honesty all the time wouldn’t lead to an ideal society. Sitting in a meeting and saying “excuse me, could you repeat that? I wasn’t paying attention because I was wondering why I am feeling so gassy” doesn’t help anything. Neither does telling the woman at Starbucks to “stop smiling. Your life sucks too!” If honesty were really the best policy, than questions like “so honey, what are you thinking about right now?” wouldn’t be allowed while laying down.

What if things were switched and the common practice was to lie first, honest second. In a lot of ways, we’ve already adopted this practice with calling out sick for work. When an employee says “can’t come into work, I’m sick” it’s a pretty safe bet they’re doing anything BUT laying around sniffling into tissues.

Honesty certainly isn’t more fun than lying. In the land of lying, you can be late to an appointment for a million reasons. Maybe there was traffic, a sick man on the subway or you had repel down the side of a building because the elevators were broken. In the land of honesty, you’re late because you didn’t care enough to be on time.

I for one wouldn’t mind a society that accepted lies. When I ask a waiter if the halibut is fresh, I’m insisting that he lie to me. Obviously, you’d like to hear “no, it’s been sitting in the mop bucket for three weeks” if that’s the truth, but you’d rather hear “yes. We caught it this morning” because you like the idea of eating fresh Halibut.

The same goes for airline pilots. When the plane starts bouncing around through a batch of turbulence, I want the pilot to come on the loudspeaker and say “Sorry for the bumps, ladies and gentleman. Just so you know, a plane has never crashed because of turbulence. Even if we ran into trouble, this plane is built out of bouncy, non-blow-up-able, rubber.” Please! Lie to me! Even if the odds are 1 in 1,000,000,000 we’ll crash, I don’t want to know about that one chance.

If everyone is lying, than not only will I not feel guilty about saying things like “I’m very much enjoying my job” but people won’t feel bad when they say things to me like “our friendship is too important to me to become physical with you”. Instead I could say “This job is helping me fulfill I bet I made” and people could say “I don’t want you to find out my vagina is square”. Much more interesting, don’t you think? Same result, too.

The other beautiful thing about accepted lying is that you’d be able to fit in the truth every once in a while and have people just write it off as a lie. “Sorry, boss, I can’t come in today. I’m still in bed with Barbara from Accounting”.

That’s not how it works though. In the end we are encouraged to say “It was my fault” instead of “it was like this when I got here”, “you look great” instead of “you look fat” and “I totally get it” instead of “why the fuck is Oprah famous?” Lying may not be accepted, but it’s necessary.

Not just for lawyers with annoying kids and wives who marry the guy from the Princess Bride. Everyone has to lie. Hell, I started this article off by telling a complete lie about liking Jim Carrey. Is that the truth? No. But at this point, you don’t really care any more…dickhead!