Be blunt and tell a person that they have added weight and watch them lose it. And it doesn’t matter if you say it in private and in a loving manner or if you are uncivilized enough to make public pronouncements. It doesn’t matter if you say it indirectly by suggesting to the person that both of you hit the gym.

The person to whom you have directed the comment will take offense. And they will rant to their friends about your insensitivity. And the friends, knowing the truth that the person is indeed in dire need of exercise and change in eating habits, will not say anything.

They will lie through their teeth. They will pretend to be shocked by your supposed cruelty. You will become a subject of scrutiny and your character will be called into question. Bad things will be said about you.

Why? Because people do not like to hear the truth. And when they say that they value honesty, they are lying. They only want to hear what they want to hear. Anything else is rude, inconsiderate, selfish and unkind.

And that’s why we lie.

We go for interviews and when they ask us why we applied, we go on and on about passion and the desire to serve. And prospective employers enthusiastically nod their heads. But we know and they know that money is the major motive behind applying for jobs. We want to be able to afford food. Everything else is secondary.

That is why it is laughable when employers say that they can’t hire someone who seems to be driven by the desire to make money.

We refuse to bury relationships when they die because we don’t have the courage to tell people that we don’t have feelings for them anymore. Especially when they have done nothing wrong but there simply isn’t a connection anymore. They are going to wail and accuse us of ruthlessness. They are going to guilt-trip us into trying to rediscover the spark.

So instead, we withdraw affection and attention. They nag us for a while but eventually, they grow weary and decide to leave. Then we feel a sense of relief.

Someone will hate her boss for giving her a bad evaluation even if she is consistently late, hardly productive and the quality of her work is poor. The truth will stare her right in her face but she will refuse to admit that it’s there. She will tell her workmates that her boss is witch-hunting her because the boss is threatened by her beauty.

And her workmates, knowing that she deserves the bad evaluation, won’t speak up. They will join in on the trash talk.

But why are we, human beings, so opposed to the truth? Because we have fragile egos. We are aware that we are human and therefore highly flawed but God forbid that someone actually points out our imperfections.

We also don’t like the truth because it forces us to take responsibility for our actions and yet we’d rather play victim.