Lies: The Stories We Tell Ourselves to Delay Ourselves

The most consistent lie I tell is a very polite one.
I’ll start tomorrow.

I will start working out tomorrow. I will fix my eating from tomorrow. I will sort out my skincare routine, finally, tomorrow. The intention is entirely sincere when I say it. I can see the version of myself I’m promising. She wakes up earlier, makes better choices, follows through. She’s not imaginary. She feels close enough that saying it out loud doesn’t feel like a lie at all.

Which is perhaps the point. Because if it felt like a lie, I wouldn’t be able to say it so easily.

There is a version of lying we don’t think of as really lying, because it looks like being kind. The parent who shields a child from the financial worry sitting at the edges of every conversation at home. The family that decides, together, not to tell someone how serious the illness is, because hope is doing more work right now than information can. Krishna stealing butter in Gokul and looking his mother straight in the eye. It wasn’t me. We retell that story with affection. There is lying, and then there is lying, and we have always understood the difference intuitively, even when we couldn’t explain it.

The lies I’m talking about are a different kind entirely.

They don’t protect anyone. They don’t soften anything for someone else. They are the ones I tell quietly, to myself, in the small moments between what I intended to do and what I actually did. And the reason they work so well is that they don’t feel like lies when I’m inside them. They feel like perfectly reasonable explanations.

There is another one I tell more often than I’d like to admit.

I’m busy.

And sometimes I am. But not always in the way I make it sound. I spend a lot of time on social media. Instagram, LinkedIn, Blogs, even. I scroll, I read, I watch, I respond, I call parts of it work, and sometimes it is work. But there are times when it is a way to stay occupied without doing the thing that actually needs my attention. The thing that is heavier. Slower. Less immediately rewarding. So I move. I keep moving. And then I tell myself I don’t have the time.

There is usually a moment, very brief, where I know exactly what I’m doing. When I pick up my phone instead of starting. When I say I’ll do it later and know I won’t. When I look at the clock and say, just ten minutes. It doesn’t last long. The story arrives quickly after and smooths it over.

Because saying I don’t have the time sounds circumstantial. External. It suggests that if the day were arranged differently, things would change. That this is temporary. That I would, if I could.

Saying I don’t have the intention is something else entirely.

If I said it plainly, I would have to admit something else. That I’m someone who is choosing not to do this. And that version of me is harder to sit with. So the story shifts, just slightly. I’m busy. I’ll start tomorrow. Now isn’t a good time. None of these feel like lies when you’re inside them. They feel like reasonable explanations that allow you to move through the day without friction, without having to face the gap between what you said you would do and what you actually did.

I don’t think this is unique to me. Most of us have versions of this. The email we’ll respond to later. The conversation we’ll have when the time is right. The thing we’ll begin once things calm down. There is always a later. There is always a better time. And there is always a story that makes waiting feel like the right decision.

The problem with these lies is not that they are dramatic. It’s that they are small enough to repeat. Small enough that each one feels like nothing. A minor adjustment. A reasonable delay. And over time, they change how you see yourself. The story settles. It starts to feel like context rather than choice. Like something happening to you rather than something you are quietly participating in. And at some point, the lie you were telling becomes the truth you are living inside. You stopped noticing when that happened. You were busy.

The truth, when it shows up, is rarely complicated. It is just inconvenient.

So we give it a better shape. A version that sounds more acceptable, even to ourselves. Until tomorrow arrives again.

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This post is a part of Blogchatter A2Z Challenge 2026 .

This is a series about storytelling beyond a craft. As something we live inside. In memory, in conversation, and in the way we understand what happens to us. Read all posts here.

I’ve done A2ZChallenge in 2017, where I collected 26 quotes by people whose names started with the letter of the day. In 2015, the theme was professional life.