lying

Have any of you seen the movie The Invention of Lying? It is probably one of the best movies I have seen in a while. Ricky Gervais is my new favorite actor. He is hilarious.

For those of you who haven't seen this movie,it is set in an alternate reality where everyone tells the truth...they blurt out exactly what is on their mind. They have no comprehension of lying, imagination, fiction, flattery etc. One day, a guy (Ricky Gervais) tells the world's first lie...however, no one is able to comprehend what it means to lie and everyone takes what he says to be the absolute truth.

Here is the movie trailer:


This movie has got me thinking.

Sure, we are taught to tell the truth, but could you imagine what the world would be like if we could only tell the truth...if we actually had to say out loud what is on our minds...how we really feel and think about things?

I think life would be depressing.

Have you ever asked someone how they are doing (just in casual conversation as you greet them) and they go on telling you how things aren't great, blah blah blah. I used to work with someone like this. Every morning when she came into work I would say, "hi, how are you?" And every morning with a mopey tone, "oh, not very good" then she would go on to say how she is tired or not feeling well or her kids are bugging her... I finally stopped asking her because it made my mornings just too depressing.

I think that one of the ways we even make it through the day is by being able to suppress our thoughts of how we are tired or how we don't like our jobs or how someone bugs the heck out of us and we are able to put on a "happy" face and deal with things. If everyone said exactly what was on their minds, we would all drive each other nuts. We would be like, "SHUT UP already."

It would be hard to get along with our friends. Our marriages might struggle...what if our husbands told us what they really thought of our new haircut? ha ha. I'm having flashbacks of when I got my pixie cut.

Things at work would be hectic. What if we said out loud what we really thought about our jobs or our bosses or the people we work with. What if we went around the office complaining out loud about our poor pay or about our job responsibilities or whatever.

Of course we love our spouses and we love our friends and family and co-workers, but of course there are those moments where we are thinking things about them that we might not necessarily want to say out loud.

Not that any of us go around lying all day long, but we can at least monitor what we do say out loud...use our better judgment and release our true feelings when appropriate.

I don't know...what do you guys think?

I will admit, however, at times it would be fun to hear people's actual thoughts...like at church. That would be interesting.

Really, my point was just to say that I LOVED this movie. I was very impressed. I was expecting a comedy, and it definitely was funny, but it was a lot more than that too. Two thumbs up from me.


[I know some of you probably hated this movie and some of you may think that only telling the truth would be the best thing ever. If so, tell me about it. I would love to hear your perspective.]