From a biological point of view, it is human instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm, and reason will guide us to do the right things and avoid wrong behavior.
But many times, people do not live by reason, or do not live by reason alone. Some things, some actions, we know that they are wrong, but we still respond with the enthusiasm of the moth to put out the fire.
For example, the theme of "The Lying Game", lying.
There are countless novels about lies, among which European and American suspense novels are the best performed, "Big Little Lies", "Lies in the Lakeside Cabin", "Chill", these novels about lies are all masterpieces of suspense.
And of course, there's this "Lying Game", a lie, a deception, the ruined lives of several people, how easy is the life of an adult to collapse?
Just one lie is enough.
01.
Lying game
At the beginning of the story, a body is found on the beach in the small town of Sarten, followed by a "I need you" text message sent to three women at the same time.
The four protagonists of the novel appear, each with different careers and families, but a corpse and a text message easily pull them back to seventeen years ago, when a lie became the nightmare of the four people for so many years.
Elsa, Fatima, Thea and Kate, the novel revolves around these four women.
Seventeen years ago, they were both boarders at Sarten Middle School and became close friends by playing the "lying game".
The so-called lying game, which originates from Kate and Thea, has specific rules of the game: someone is deceived and gets ten points; if you make up a good story, or make the other party shut up, you get five points; if you cheat an arrogant person, you get fifteen points.
In addition, there is a rule of the game: you are not allowed to lie to your own people.
Kate admits that she started the game just to "have more fun." They never thought that every deception would come at the cost of their own credit overdraft, and the story of the wolf coming was always hindsight.
Kate and Thea, as the "old fritters" of Sarten Middle School, soon attract two newcomers, Elsa and Fatima, and the four become girlfriends, and the game of lying is their secret bond.
The tragedy happens late one night, Kate's father commits suicide, in order to avoid being orphaned and the house being taken away, Kate chooses to hide the news of her father's death, and Elsa, Fatima, and Thea decide to help Kate clean up this lie.
The game of lying had completely deteriorated at this moment, the biggest lie they had ever told, and they had deceived everyone until the corpse reappeared.
The lie of the past was brought up again, and the past was like a shark under the ice, trying to subvert the current stable life of the four people. What is even more surprising is that Elsa found that there seems to be another kind of truth in the secret they tried so hard to cover up, and while they are lying and deceiving others, they are also unconsciously caught in another scam...
02.
How much effort, how much regret
"Lying Game" is like almost all European and American suspense, nervous and exciting when reading the book, but after reading it, there is a suffocating pain.
Suspense is only the shell of these novels, and through this shell, it is the truth of life that the author wants to tell.
The most deplorable thing about "The Lying Game" is undoubtedly the Kate family, and this family is also the root of that big lie.
Kate's father, Ambrose, was an artist, but for the sake of his daughter Kate and son (not biological) Luke, he gave up his career and his dream of becoming a master artist to come to Salten as a teacher.
Ambrose gave almost all of his life, and even his last life, for his son and daughter. But the result? Does he care about the future of the family and harmony?
At all, the family that was maintained by love and even life eventually fell apart, and the fragments of the family also scratched every family member, leaving their subsequent lives fragmented.
This is a difficult paradox, why sometimes, the more we love, the more regrets we get? Like the saying in BearTown, as a parent, you always feel like a blanket that is too small. No matter how hard you try to take care of everyone, someone will always catch a cold.
Not long ago I read another book, "Someone Else's Child," which was about a family like Ambrose.
The Pan family who immigrated to Canada from Vietnam was originally a happy family, Pan Hanhui and his wife Liang Bixia worked hard, accumulated a lot of wealth, so that their daughter Jennifer lived a rich life, Pan Hanhui and his wife gave Jennifer high hopes, never spared money in their daughter's education, they gave up their own desires to support their daughters.
But the result was that the family was torn apart, Jennifer joined forces with kidnappers to murder her parents, her mother Liang Bixia died on the spot, and her father was seriously injured.
Such stories make people speechless for a long time, and at the same time wonder, how much effort do we have to make to maintain a happy family? To raise children well?
03.
The undertone of lies
We often say that as long as we tell a lie, we must use countless lies to round that lie, and eventually become a vicious circle, the lie superimposed on the lie, the true and the false can not be distinguished, and even they have been deceived.
This kind of life, built on lies, collapses often only in an instant.
At the end of The Lie Game, the author says it's a story of hope that tells us how to move on after suffering unbearable suffering.
Yes, even if life has experienced a huge collapse, as long as we live, we still have to learn to carry the weight forward. But can the past that breaks our hearts go off? Can't we always start all over again?
In the novel, after the lies were exposed and the truth was finally revealed, Aisha's marriage and life also experienced a huge earthquake. She finally had a belated realization: Maybe it was time to stop lying.
But as soon as the thought arose, it quickly died, and when her husband called, Elsa once again chose to lie.
She walked into another lie, even if the motives were different from the past.
Elsa's experience shines into the real lives of many of us through words, lies are almost the norm in real life, and those "don't lie" teachings when they were young are eventually crushed by the "love must be" in adulthood.
Who doesn't want to live authentically and openly? But why do we always choose to lie again and again? Is it that the lives of adults are destined to be covered with lies?