The Little Liar

by Mitch Albom

“That was impossible.” But here is the funny thing about truth: the less real something seems, the more people want to believe it.

This was said so artfully.

“People say many things. Some are true. Some are lies. Sometimes, if you say a lie long enough, people believe it’s the truth.

But just as ignoring proper food will ultimately decay your body, so will handpicking the Truth eventually rot your soul.

The Wolf’s deceptions grow more powerful. He creates words to blanket his evil. This is an old trick. If you want to get away with lying, first change the language.

impunity.

“When you do something for someone that can never be repaid. Like cleaning the graves of the dead. That is a true and loving kindness.”

“It’s easy to be nice when you get something in return. It’s harder when nobody knows the good you are doing except yourself.”

ceded

cacophony

So he did not say a word. And with that silence, he changed his brother’s life forever. Sometimes, it is the truths we don’t speak that echo the loudest.

valise.

Of all the lies you tell yourself, perhaps the most common is that, if you only do this or that, you will be accepted. It affects your behavior with classmates, neighbors, colleagues, lovers. Humans do a great deal to be liked. They are needier than I can comprehend.

“A man, to be forgiven, will do anything,” he said.

accosted

Truth is a straight line, but human life is a flexible experience. You exit the womb curling into a new world, and from that moment forward, you bend and adjust.

balked.

“Never be ashamed of a scar. In the end, scars tell the story of our lives, everything that hurt us, and everything that healed us.”

It is a sad fact I have noticed with humans. By the time you share what a loved one longs to hear, they often no longer need it.

pachivalo sar o chachimo.” “What does it mean?” Nico asked. “‘Some lies are easier to believe than the truth.’”

War had shown him cruelty, brutality, and indifference. But above all, it had shown him survival through lying. Nothing—least of all the Truth—could get in the way.

So in that infirmary, believing he had ushered his loved ones to their deaths—they killed them all—Nico Krispis finally lost me forever, like an astronaut losing the cord out in space. “You must go to a hospital, sir,” he said, rising.

But there are certain truths that are experienced universally, and one of them is loss. The hollow in your heart as you stand by a grave. The lump in your throat as you stare at your destroyed home. Loss. Yes. Loss is universal. Everyone in their lifetime will know it.

The truth of love is that when it fades away, you don’t really care less. You don’t care at all.

Hate is an ancient melody. Blame is even older.

fervid

incensed.

At her daughter’s urging, Fannie visited a memorial for the Jewish victims of the “Holocaust,” a now-common term for what had happened under the Nazis. It came from the Greek word holocauston, which means a burned sacrifice.

The more you confront the truth, the more upset you are likely to become. But if you believe that old expression that truth can set you free, then am I not what you secretly yearn for?

When you lie about everything, you belong to nothing.