Tightrope Walking

I drove home from CMU today. It was a good drive...really peaceful and relaxing.
I had awhile to think, as usual.

I think about people a lot. People and how people try to relate to people.

I don't understand the point of lying to someone you've just met. Someone who hasn't yet made any judgments or value statements about you...and yet you're still playing the game of trying to do and say what they want to hear. What's the point of that? Isn't it better to be honest before things get to the point where someone could get hurt? Or even - isn't it better to give the other person a chance to accept you as you are? It just seems like making so many assumptions about other people leads to really pointlessly difficult situations in the end.

At the same time, I know people deserve a lot of slack. If someone's trying to do better than they did before, maybe it's reasonable for them to state something that's an ideal moreso than a reality in the hopes that it'll become a reality. Maybe someone doesn't want to drag something painful around with them if they don't have to, or maybe they were hurt in the past by telling the truth, or being too honest about what they want or are doing. It's not really my place to judge, it's just...when you know so many different people who are playing different roles in discrete (but analogous) situations, it just...yeah. In some ways it seems like a minor miracle that people are able to get anywhere with each other at all, given that there seem to be first so many shades of behavior as opposed to word, and then - so many shades of motivation and rationale for aforementioned behavior. I guess that's what getting to know someone is about, but regardless of how long you know someone - you can't ever know what you don't know. (Ha.)

How much should rationale matter, anyway? Does that make things needlessly complicated, or give too much of an easy excuse to people who don't actually deserve it? I don't think so, but where can one make the distinction in order to stop short of self-delusion?