I heard a while back that the average person tells three lies every ten minutes. When my friend told me the statistic, I was astonished. In fact, I wondered if she was lying just to help us boost stats for our project. We were relating it to strangers meeting strangers when dating or trying to land a date, and so it seemed more believable as a number in the setting of men and women trying to impress/attract/bed other men and women. It’s possible even the stat itself, which litters the internet, was fabricated just to get more clicks.

Nonetheless, for some time, it really had me thinking hard as I spoke, concerned about the validity of every word I put forward during a day. It took me out of the interactions I’d had with others, as I listened carefully to their words, trying to discern what might possibly be lies, mistruths, and minor-bendings-of-reality—some made in the service of advancing agendas, others made in the name of protecting the innocent, and the daily embellishments used to bolster a good tale or fill in the gaps when we can’t quite remember the whole story of a story we are inclined to modern-day campfire with our friends.

Like so many recent subjects bouncing around my head, I got to thinking about lying again as I speculated, hypothesized, “roll-played” in my head how I might address dishonesty with my future boy. As a child, I was notorious for my ridiculous fabrications. As a young adult I think I told my fair share, though I’d imagine it pales in comparison to the total told by much larger fish in this global pond. The phrase “Honesty is always the best policy” has stuck with me since the day some poster in some elementary school classroom introduced the notion. And, of course, now I agree. But I got to thinking in a horrible Carrie Bradshaw kind of way, “Is lying sometimes the best policy?”

Entertaining the thought of writing a book on lying. Non-fiction. More of a collection of stories from people, rather than a bunch of musings from my own head. I wonder how open people would be to discussing their lies. I think we’ve all told at least one or two. Big ones, little ones. Even if it was just to spare feelings or keep a child as a child for a while longer. If you have absolutely, never, ever, not in your whole life, told a lie—well, I’d certainly be interested in your story too. But what I’d really like to know, in a somehow anonymous way, is what lie a person told that had the biggest benefit to either them, a family member, a friend, or even the world I suppose. In other words, perhaps you told the single lie that saved the world from destruction many moons ago? Would you even know? Perhaps some minor fib you told had a butterfly effect, and without it, we’d have already gone into a The Road-like type of existence. (Never miss an opportunity to plug my fear of mass cannibalism).

Conversely, what if you only think the lie you once told has served you or whomever else well? By which I mean, you look at the reality you know that exists around that lie, it seems awesome because it is, but perhaps without the lie, the reality that would have spun forward without your fib might have been even more amazing. Or, what it someone else’s reality is a living hell all because of that lie you told?

I’ll give you an example: You told a lie in college to keep up with the path you were expected to take. The lie worked, you moved forward as had always been the plan. You graduated in a timely fashion and went on to get a job, and other jobs, climbed ladders and so forth. You can look at your life now, it’s pretty fucking perfect, you’ve no issues with it whatsoever, but… what if that tiny fib you told to stay on track cost you your chance at some other even more meaningful existence? Or, perhaps you were never meant to be in the spot you are now, your lie somehow pushed you into the fated spot of another, leaving them out in the figurative cold.

Maybe I’ll need to create a system of measurement in order to keep everyone’s judging on par with the rest, if anyone decided to participate at all. How many of us are ready to cop to the best lie we ever told?