The Insiduous Nature of the Off-White Lie

The lies we most often believe, and thus which do us the most harm, are not black, opposed to the white of truth. They are not the direct opposite of the truth, but just a shade off, just a slight twisting of the truth such that an observer who is less vigilant or knowledgeable might mistake it for the truth. In fact, much like a color swatch that is just barely off-white, it can often be indistinguishable to our eyes from the true white until you hold them up next to each other and compare.

Let’s take the common mantra as an example: “If you believe it, you can achieve it.” Variants include “Just believe in yourself” or “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” Already, probably there are some who are bristling at my implication that this is a lie at all, because they have experience with it, or it has a place of value in their lives or even because it is the final straw that they are clinging to as the only hope that things will eventually turn around for them. But all the best lies have threads of truth in them, and it is precisely this design - to hide a lie in a cloak of truth, that gets us to bite the hook when our eyes are on the worm.

The truth in this case is that belief is truly a powerful factor in the context of a human mind. If you were to sit in the middle of an open, unlocked gymnasium floor and you really truly believed that you were contained within a jail cell of four invisible walls - so much so that it became a certainty in your own mind - you would be trapped as effectively as if those invisible walls actually existed. Because you believe they are there, you won’t test them. You won’t try to escape. You’ll just sit in your imaginary jail cell and accept your fate. In this same way, it is possible for us to believe ourselves right out of opportunities that come our way in life, because we just don’t think it will work out, or that we’re in some way not good enough. Having self-confidence and believing in your own abilities and worthiness is critical to success, because without it, you won’t even try or won’t try your best, thereby fulfilling your own prophecy. That’s a profoundly true statement.

Now let’s look at the lie from above. It looks like it is saying almost exactly the same thing as what we just described as the truth. The key here is that the lie suggests that believing in yourself is the only factor for success, that things like hard work or talent or even luck play no part in the people who enjoy grandiose achievement. When we think about it for even a moment, this is obviously untrue. But that only becomes obvious when we compare against the truth. How many people have swallowed the lie “If you believe it, you can achieve it” and set out at a young age, starry eyed, assured that their success is imminent and planning their acceptance speeches at their eventual, inevitable awards ceremonies (I have totally done this), only to be faced with some hard realities when their dreams don’t work out perfectly the first try, or they bump up against their own limitations either in ability or unwillingness to exert the enormous effort required to be at the top of any competitive field? It’s easy to see how this person could become disheartened, disillusioned, or start to worry that maybe there’s something wrong or broken about themselves. This might lead to depression, or with just a few repetitions, an attitude of giving up - ironically creating the very mindset that we are trying to prevent when we tell children to “Just believe in yourself”.

Or, let’s look at another common societal trope: “People don’t change,” or “If someone expects you to change, they don’t respect you for who you are,” which are two sides of the same coin. At their heart is the suggestion that people are incapable of change and anyone who doesn’t accept this is just delusional. This is pretty obviously untrue when you dissect it. Any growth is by definition a change, and humans are more growth-oriented than any other species on the planet. We start out life as this worthless, defenseless pink pupa who can’t so much as self-ambulate, and we grow into a creature that is capable of building skyscrapers or damming rivers or putting a car into orbit. Obviously, people grow. Our entire existence revolves around growing and improving. And any growth is change. But the white in this case is that people can only change themselves. It is impossible to change someone else. No matter how hard you try, you cannot force someone else to grow, even if that change would clearly be in their best interest or help them achieve their own goals. It is the acceptance of this truth - that you cannot cause someone else to change; you can only change yourself - that is the white to compare this off-white to. To accept that people don’t change is to encourage giving up on someone who might genuinely be trying to grow and might need to go through a transition stage where they learn and accept some important truths about themselves. Or as the flip side, it might cause you to discard a worthy relationship because someone wants to help support your growth, but you misinterpret it as an aggressive act when you classify their actions as “expecting you to change.” It’s completely true that you shouldn’t change because someone else wants you to; you should only grow in the direction that is important to you. And it is also my firmly held conviction that if someone is abusive because you’re not the person they want you to be, that’s a toxic situation and needs to be altered post-haste. But if you accept the off-white lie here, you can be over-broad in your categorizations of unhealthy relationships and cause yourself to lose a relationship you might have truly benefitted from.

You may be feeling a bit of unease at this point, having perpetuated these lies yourself. You may have, in an attempt at good deeds, encouraged someone else by giving them these off-white lies, and in doing so, helped them further degrade their own lives. Don’t worry; this doesn’t make you a bad person. You were only repeating something that had been sold to you that you thought was true and helpful. It merely highlights how easily these harmful, off-white lies can propagate and how important it is to be aware of how they work and how easy it is to accidentally accept and distribute something that looks like the healthy truth but can actually be harmful to the recipient. Understanding the nature of lies as “off-white” can help you keep a sharper lookout for them.