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Lindsey Lake
English 101-04
9/30/00
(re-write 11/2/00)

People often lie every day. Their reasons for lying vary from person to person and situation to situation. Two common reasons for lying are to protect others and to benefit the person lying. There are many reasons for both, such as trying to keep other people happy and trying to keep yourself (the liar) happy.

People lie to protect other people for an assortment of reasons. The ‘protective’ lie is probably the most common lie told daily. For example, when someone is wearing a new outfit and asks how do you like it, you might say they look great even though you think their choice of wardrobe is hideous. People lie like this to spare other people’s feelings or to make someone feel better. A good friend of mine recently cut her hair in a short boy-cut style. Even though the new style made her look like a ten-year-old boy, another friend and I told her we loved her new hair and that she looked good with it that way. The reason we did this was to make her feel better about something she wasn’t sure about and to give her more confidence.

Another common lie, and a more complex and hurtful one, is when people lie to benefit themselves. People do this to gain something or to keep themselves happy even though they may be hurting someone else. In one instance, this happened to me. I was looking for a new job and had heard that recently a local novelty shop had fired two employees. The owner was looking for new sales clerks. I immediately went in and filled out an application and talked with the owner. She told me to come in the next day to start. I thought I had finally got the job, so I called another job opportunity I had and told them I had found another job. The next day, the lady from the novelty store called my home and told me that she wouldn’t need me, she had decided to do something else. She didn’t elaborate any farther when I asked her what she was doing, but offered an insincere apology for wasting my time. I had found out the real reason she didn’t hire me was because another girl who worked there had told her that I was a friend of one of the girls who had been fired. In fact I was not her friend. The girl lied to benefit herself because she didn’t like me, which led to me loosing out on two jobs opportunities and a stack of bills that I can’t pay.

In every day life people lie. They lie for many reasons and some don’t realize that in the process, some of those lies are hurting other people. Sometimes lies may be used to protect others, but for the most part lies hurt the liar and the person being lied to.