While very young, we were trained and brought up as kids to see lying as a very bad and deadly habit and we often live by that. And being an innocent boy or girl back then we were assumed to be, you dare not tell lies of a thing or you get punished by an elderly person if you're caught telling lies.
I believe we all grew up in this way because I don't think there is a parent or guardian who will intentionally train their ward to tell lies. But the confusion is this;
since we were not trained or taught to tell lies, how come we all grew up to include telling lies in our lifestyle?
It's almost impossible to meet someone who has never told lies before in his entire life either as a kid or as an adult. What we rather do is try to live consciously enough that we avoid telling lies by every means possible. And in some instances, you have to tell the lies in order to save yourself from peril. We're living beings, and as creatures with emotions we will do everything humanly possible to survive. So if telling a lie is what will make you survive from a disaster, then why tell the truth?
Lying Could Also Come With Some Goodies
There are some certain events of your life you face that you just wish you were someone else or that you were just the opposite of the person you are. Infact, you'd even wish you were really a bad person. But the consciousness that lives in you will not allow you to do such. Even if you see other people benefiting from such bad acts, you will always find it difficult to imitate them. And this is exactly how I felt when this happened to me.
This happened while I was in level one during polytechnic days. The memories are still fresh in my head. Infact, it was during the fasting period called "Ramadan" and the house I live in was attacked in the middle of the night by unknown gunmen heavily armed and they all covered their faces to hide their identity. So it was very difficult to identify any of them. Plus we the residents of the house were all students and we knew nothing or nobody as regards community issues.
I Was Fortunate And Unfortunate That Night
It's a house with 15 rooms and a very big living room upstairs for everyone to use. And the moment you step into the house, I live in the first room in the house so I'm easily accessible by almost anyone who comes into the house cus my door lock is faulty. And just as you might be guessing right now, my room was the first to be attacked by these gunmen. Another big woe was that a friend came to spend the night over in my room that night and we both became victims.
The fortunate side of the story is that because I was the first to be attacked, my friend and I were able to separately escape and run far to seek for safety that night. And we two were the only people that escaped from the attack that night. Although I was hit in the face, the injury was minor compared to the rest of the people who could not escape.
The Later Side Of The Story
I hid myself in a bush and watched the attack from afar as these men lay my other colleagues on the floor to beat them mercilessly. This continued for about the next 35 minutes and nobody came to rescue until they were done and all zoomed off in their car.
After this terrible incident that night, we all converged together with other neighbors and to my surprise the only thing these guys came to do was to beat us up. They were not robbers cus nothing went missing in anybody's room. They did not even hijack anybody's money. And we were left to wonder why they did such a thing or if someone hired them for the job. All they did was just to break in and beat everyone up (both male and female).
Long Story Cut Short
The matter got to our school management and the community leaders so they took it up from there. And after much investigation, we were surprised to hear that the community vigilantes were responsible for all that happened.
Some of them were arrested and we were also invited to the police station the following day to identify them and receive some formal apologies from their head. We were told to include in the statement report everything they damaged so they will pay for it all.
It was like a perfect timing for everyone to repair their properties. Some people wrote that they destroyed their gadgets, some their phones, others their door and room window, the seriously injured ones were treated too. But I did not include my faulty door lock simply because they were not responsible for it.
So the day they came for mass repair for all damages, my room door was not included and I became very ashamed among others not to lie that they destroyed my door lock.