Lies

Imagine we were having a conversation and I told you, “I lie to myself all the time.” you might be confused at first, right? Surely someone can’t lie to themselves. I would have thought this as well, but after reading The Outsiders, I realized that it’s true. At the end of chapter 1, Ponyboy says, “I lie to myself all the time, but I never believe myself.” This means that even though Ponyboy knows the truth, he tries to make things better in his head than they are in real life. I realized after reading this that I also lie to myself all the time. For example, if I get a lot of homework, I will try and convince myself that it’s actually not that much and I can get it done easily. Most of the time this works and I get everything done, but there have been a few times where I don’t believe myself and I give up completely. I also lie to myself about the unknown. Like many other people, one of my biggest fears is the unknown, such as what happens after we die or just the unexplainable things that happen in every day life like things moving around on their own or a mysterious death. Since nobody has an explanation for any of these things, I try to come up with something that makes sense and I convince myself that it’s true. This is how religions get started, and although I’m not a religious person I still believe things easily just so that I have some sort of reassurance. This is also why I believe lots of the conspiracy theories I hear and I’m very interested in them, even though they freak me out. Although, like me trying to convince myself I don’t have much homework, sometimes I won’t believe myself, and this is what is called an existential crisis. Even though I try not to think about how big the universe is or contemplate the inevitability of death, every once in a while one of those thoughts will slip into my head and I won’t be able to convince myself of anything. This leads to hours or even days of me lying on the floor or sitting in a dark corner just staring blankly at the ceiling thinking about all the things that I and the rest of humanity will never know the answer to. Although I sometimes don’t believe myself, I do lie to myself all the time.