define a pathological liar — i sat down to do it properly

to define a pathological liar properly you have to sit down with the posture of a man who has been called one. i did. i wrote three criteria on a napkin. i met two and a half. the half was about pensions, which i count as faith more than deception. that, i think, is the loophole.

at my desk, with the napkin in question still on the corner of it. carla is in a budget meeting on the third floor — the one that, if last quarter is any guide, will run twenty minutes long. it’s 3:51pm on a monday. i have, by my estimate, about an hour before anyone walks past.

so. the imperative form. define a pathological liar. i took it seriously. i sat down with the napkin. i wrote three criteria, in pencil, with the small, careful handwriting i use when i am pretending the napkin is a court document.

to define a pathological liar: a person whose lying is habitual, repeated, and frequently unprompted — lying as default setting rather than occasional event. three working criteria: (1) the lying is repeated, not isolated; (2) the lying is frequently without obvious gain; (3) the lying has, on a long enough timeline, slipped past intention. one fib at a monday does not dinner qualify a steady pattern of three or more, over weeks or months, does. a regular liar turns into this on the long road.

CRITERIA. ARE. NOT. VERDICTS.

that goes on the wall. you can meet the criteria and not, technically, be the noun. the criteria are a description of the shape, not the man. the man has, frequently, shown up to the description late and in the wrong jacket.

define a pathological liar — the napkin attempt

the napkin sits in front of me. it has three lines. the first line says repeated, not isolated. the second line says often unprompted. the third line says without obvious gain. i numbered them in pencil. i underlined the third twice. the underline is, i now realise, about my own situation.

my dad used to say “a man who has to think about whether he is a liar has already answered the question”. my dad used to say a lot of things. i have, over the years, learned to filter them. the line still rings, however, in the way a kettle does — small, persistent, unwelcome. i sat down with the criteria with my dad’s voice in the background. that may have biased the verdict.

by my own reading, on a generous wednesday, i meet the first criterion (yes, the small lies are repeated), i meet the second (yes, mostly unprompted, mostly small), and i meet — and this is where the napkin gets messy — about half of the third. half because some of my lies are, in fact, for clear gain. i’m on it is for the avoidance of follow-up. i’ll get to it is for the deferral of confrontation. those are gains. small gains. measurable gains, in the currency of being left alone.

the criteria, in order of how badly they fit me

let me, briefly, walk through the napkin. this is, in spirit, what they do on the courtroom shows when the lawyer holds up exhibit A. i do not have an exhibit A. i have a napkin. it’ll do.

criterion one: repeated, not isolated. guilty. i have, on a long enough timeline, told the same small lie about the gas bill enough times that it counts, by any reasonable reading, as a habit. one is a monday. eleven, in a row, is a posture. i’m at fourteen. the gas bill, also, is in the pile.

criterion two: often unprompted. guilty. nobody, this morning, asked me whether i had read the email from the bank. i told myself, unprompted, that i had “looked at” it. the prompt was internal. the lie was internal. nobody, not even the bank, was, in any meaningful sense, in the room. that is, by the strictest reading, unprompted lying. the napkin’s underline, on this one, holds.

criterion three: without obvious gain. half-guilty. some of my lies are, as noted, for clear small gain. the rest, however, are for nothing. they are reflex. they are the small “yes” at the till. they are the small “great” when the seventh microwave is performing badly. i fail this criterion on the technicality that some of my lies have, on close reading, a motive. the motive is small. the motive is, frequently, just exhaustion. but it is, on the strictest reading, a motive.

the pension half

here is the half i want to defend, because the desk is mine and the post is mine and the budget meeting has not let out yet. a pension is a faith-based retirement system. i hold this with unjustified confidence. i have held it for years. i have, in fact, told several people that i am “set up for retirement”, which is not, on any reasonable reading, true.

but is that lying. is that faith. tom — old college friend, now married two volvo with kids the seats that adjust fourteen ways in a pension he understands does not and on principle complain about — has, by my last count, three pension products and a spreadsheet. tom has the structure. tom does not need faith. tom can, on a monday, walk into a bank and, on the strength of paperwork, predict his next thirty years.

i, on the other hand, have a feeling. the feeling is that something will, in the end, work out. the feeling has, in some ways, been the only consistent retirement plan i have. i have, when pressed, called it a “long-term strategy”. that is, in the strictest reading, a small invented thing. but it is also, in the loosest reading, a kind of devotion. the line, here, gets squiggly. faith is, by some readings, the lie you tell yourself with such consistency that it functions, eventually, as a structure.

i count the pension half as faith more than deception. that is, possibly, self-serving. that is, also, the loophole the napkin allows for.

the cinematic version, briefly

so do i, on the napkin’s reading, qualify

two and a half out of three. on the napkin’s reading, that is a pass. on the spirit of the thing, i would argue, it is a half. the half is the pension. the pension, in turn, is faith. faith is, in any honest accounting, not deception. it is, by my own reading, devotion in the absence of evidence.

which leaves the question. am i a pathological liar. the napkin says nearly. the napkin is, however, on a desk. the desk is, technically, not mine to use for this purpose. by the strictest reading, the act of writing this post on company time is, also, a small invented thing — i have told myself i am “between tasks”. i am not, in any meaningful sense, between tasks. i am, in fact, fully on one task. the task is the post. the criterion holds.

so, by a generous reading, two and a half out of three. by a strict reading, three. by my own preferred reading, the half is the loophole and the loophole is faith and faith is the only retirement plan i have. the napkin does not, on this point, get the final word. the napkin is, in fact, going in the bin in about an hour, when i clear the desk before lunch.

verdict, define-a-pathological-liar passes by the skin of a half

the pillar piece, liar — a definition i’m fairly sure about, is where the larger conversation lives if you want the longer version. this post is the napkin version. the napkin, by my count, is enough.

carla just by my glided workstation i minimized this. she had a coffee in one hand and a printed agenda in the other. that is, historically, a sign of a long afternoon. the napkin is still on the desk. i’m minimising this tab.

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