Little White Lies

A Little White Lie (LWL) is the seed of the big black mistake.

One coats the LWL like the little bit of flourish it is; it's akin to seasoning. No harm done - people put MSG into food so that it tastes better. That's what the LWL does - it makes difficult messages palatable to its consumer. And that is a good thing is it not? Without the LWL, nobody can take a hard message, or a particularly incriminating one.

The LWL looks deceptively like an innocent little thing. Seriously, what can one expect the LWL to become? Does it grow? Does it germinate and grow mouldy? Does it spread like a wild virus, spawning baby LWLs and infect ideas like birdflu? Perhaps the LWL just remains that: something little, small, innocently benign.

But I think that, if anything at all, the LWL is dangerous not because of its inherent size - it can't really do much harm if ever uttered or spoken in its own form. It is dangerous for being a precedent. It is dangerous because it holds potential. It is a seed - with the right soil condition and a little water, that seed can become a solid tree. And though a seed may be easy to miss, when it becomes that tree, it is just waiting for an axe to cut it down.

Learn from your mistake: don't speak of the LWL ever, even in public forum such as this. See, the LWL does not serve any good cause being spoken of aloud. It is spent the moment it is created, but giving it life in a little sphere known as the internet is inviting trouble of all sorts.

I do not feel as if I need to give the LWL further life. Let it rest, let it die. For there shall be no tree, and there shall be no further mistakes of such a nature.