Protecting from Unnecessary Hurt

By Donald W. McCullogh

Taken from “Write to be Read” (Reading, Reflection, and Writing) by William R. Smalzer

Verna claims that I said her baby was ugly.  I can’t imagine being that insensitive, though it was a long time ago and my memory isn’t exact in these matters.  I do recall Verna holding up her newborn and saying, “Isn’t she cute?”  And I, seeing a splotchy, scrunched little face and being committed to complete honesty, must have said something like “Well, she really is … a baby?”  Or maybe, “It takes an infant a few months before she can really be considered cute.”  Or I suppose there is a small possibility I said, “Strictly speaking, she is kind of ugly at the moment but will undoubtedly become a ravishing beauty.”

Nearly thirty years have passed, but whenever I run into Verna she reminds me that I called her baby ugly.  I don’t know her daughter; for all I know she became Miss Universe or perhaps my words lodged in her tiny subconscious and she has spent the last fifteen years in psychoanalysis working on low self-esteem.  In any event, I now wish I had lied.  It would have saved all of us a lot of grief.

Occasionally, courtesy calls for a lie.  Let me hasten to stress I’m talking about white lies, not black or gray or even off-white lies.  Show-white lies.  But even so, I realize I’ve just launched this chapter into very dangerous waters, with though ethical questions all around us.  We had better navigate through this subject very carefully, wit a firm grip on the tiller…

… How can we speak truthfully about lying?  The ancient philosopher Aristotle may be of help to us.  He said that honesty was more than unloading everything to everyone.  Rather, it is speaking the right truth to the right person at the right time in the right way for the right reason.

Not every truth is mine to tell: a truth shared in confidence and a truth that would needlessly hurt another is not mine to tell.  Not every person has a right to know the truth.  Some willfully distort what they hear; some use facts to cover a larger, more important truth: some have blabbermouths with unrelenting and undiscriminating tongues.  Not every time is appropriate for the truth: some seasons call for tactful silence: they day your friend’s daughter dropped out of school is not the day to tell her about your daughter making the honour roll.  Not every way of communicating honours the truth.  Sometimes the manner in which something is said subverts reality, as when a preacher says all the right words about God’s love but through a tone of voice and a concluding string of “oughts” (therefore we ought to do this and we ought to do that) that makes you feel guiltier than ever.  Not every reason deserves the use of truth: some motives for telling the truth are simply too destructive to deserve the respectability of being clothed in the truth.  Some expressions of “honesty” are really attempts to demean and belittle another person.

When it is the wrong truth or the wrong person or the wrong time or the wrong way or the wrong reason, a white lie may have more integrity than a facile, insensitive “honesty”.  But when does a white lie begin to turn a slight shade of gray?  When does it cross over and become an immoral act of dishonesty?

Perhaps a good test would be to ask, Does this lie protect the other person or does it protect me?  Let’s waste no time in admitting that it’s not easy to tell the difference.  On the surface, a lie may appear t protect another person from unnecessary pain; on closer examination, however, it’s actually an attempt to save me from uncomfortable exposure.  In Graham Greene’s “The Heart of the Matter”, a police officer in a West African colony during the war has an affair, and in an effort to “protect” his wife from the pain of the truth, walks down a road of falsehood that leads to disaster.  Greene’s story may be fiction but it’s a profound truth reenacted everyday.  It’s easy to convince ourselves we’re guarding the feelings of another when we’re only trying to protect ourselves – and this sort of deception often ends in more complication and more lying and more pain than we could have ever imagined.

But just because it’s difficult to tell the difference between and appropriate lie and a morally unacceptable lie does not mean we give up the attempt to make the distinction.  Life, after all, is difficult.  So we press on, doing our best, knowing we’re not God, and counting on the grace of God when we blow it.  Though committed to honesty, we know that sometimes courtesy calls for creative stretching the truth.

Many pairs of words imply each other. Finish implies complete, so completely finsish is redundant. So are many other pairs of words:

1. past memories

2. various differences

3. each individual

4. basic fundamentals

5. true facts

6. important essentials

7. future plans

8. sudden crisis

9. terrible tragedy

10. end result

11. final outcome

12. free gift

13. past history

14. unexpected surprise

Example: Before the travel agent was completely able to finish explaining the various differences between all of the many vacation packages her travel agency was offering, the customer changed his future plans.

Revised: Before the travel agent finished explaining the differences between the vacation packages her travel agency was offering, the customer changed his plans.

Any of you who have been asked to produce a letter of recommendation might find yourselves wondering how to describe your subject’s less-than-sterling qualities.

Here are some phrases you might find useful.

It was given to me by Julian Craft, my instructor for ENGL 225 (Professional Writing) course at DeVry.

For an employee who is so unproductive that the job is better left unfilled:

“I can assure you that no person would be better for the job.”

For an employee with no ambition:

“He could not care less about the number of hours he had to put in.”

“You would indeed be fortunate to get this person to work for you.”

For a stupid employee:

“There is nothing you can teach a man like him.”

“I most enthusiastically recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever.”

For a dishonest employee:

“Her true ability was deceiving.”

“He’s an unbelievable worker.”

For a employee who is not worth further consideration as a job candidate:

“I would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of employment.”

“All in all, I cannot say enough good things about this candidate or recommend him too highly.”

For the chronically absent:
”A man like him is hard to find.”

“”It seemed her career was just taking off.”

For the office drunk:

“I feel his real talent is wasted here.”

“We generally found him loaded with work to do.”

“Every hour with him was a happy hour.”

Brief preview:

In one week I made one friend and a foe,  met new people on a regular basis, exercised my brain and practised my communication skills, verbal and oral.  I feel like in a school again — learning the rules of dating and polishing my famous strategy “How to get what I want.”  So, I will keep you posted.

After we watched the tape, Julian Craft told us to write an incident report. At that moment, we had to write the report by hand using the forms, he gave us. We were allowed to talk to each other. We worked on our reports for about twenty minutes. Then Julian Craft asked us to go the laboratory and prepare a typed report using BLICQ format. He specifically instructed us not to go to the nearest “Coffee Time”, although it was my original intention. I went to the CIS laboratory and occupied a computer at the row A. I saw some of my classmates in the laboratory, as well as Julian Craft. I remember discussing BLICQ format with Olanie and Wieslaw. I started writing the report, but I did not have enough time to complete it, as we had another class at 12:00. I was going to finish my report during the week-end, but my first priority was to complete a project in Advanced C course. I worked on it for the whole week-end and there was no time left for the incident report.

To: Julian Craft

From:

CC:

Date: August 14, 2000

Re: Incident Report

Julian Craft showed us videotape that was to imitate an incident. It appeared that his intention was to give us an exercise in writing incident reports.

The incident occurred at 11:05 AM on Friday, August 11, 2000. Julian Craft was conducting a class in Professional Writing (ENGL 225) in the Room 133 for the group 04CDS1. He brought a trolley with a TV and camcorder to the class. At the beginning of the class, Julian Craft told us that we were going to watch some videotape.

The tape was approximately two minutes long and it had no sound. The videotape appeared to be copied from some TV series. I can affirm that I have never watched this particular series before. To the best of my recollection, the sequence of events was as follows:

Scene 1:

It was a room, supposedly a security guard office. A man in a uniform was already in when another man in a state of agitation ran into the room. It seemed that the man who ran into the room told the security guard some striking news.

Scene 2:

This episode took place in an underground parking lot. Two gentlemen from the first scene ran into the parking lot and I saw them gesticulating and pointing to something.

Scene 3:

A black car was leaving the parking lot at the speed that seemed unusually high, at least for a parking lot.

Scene 4:

A woman was lying on the ground of the parking lot. I did not notice her moving. She was covered with some cloth up her waist or probably higher. I saw a red stain on her, but I cannot recollect the position of that stain.

Scene 5:

This episode pictured different people in the same underground parking lot. I do not recall very well who they were, who was talking to whom, and in what sequence. These people looked more like officials rather than civilians to me and the whole scene looked like some investigation was taking place. There was a policeman (young black male) and another gentleman in a blue shirt who looked like a detective (older white male).