Over the last few days, I've had pause to think about a particular enigma. It seems that liars are forgiven, but people who value truth, are rarely respected. Liars can be written off, often draped with excuses. 'That's just the way he is.'

There's a grey shade with truth. It can be said in one way, but completely heard in a different manner. Most people recognize miscommunication and will acknowledge the crossed signals, but those that cling to a blinded emotion, be it love or hate, don't listen. They've made up their mind. They absolutely hate or love the person trying to talk and filter every word through that screen of emotional deception.

In that case, words are completely meaningless. As writers, especially ones who find an enormous gap between communicating on paper and orally, being misunderstood in our real world is deeply frustrating. After all, we are wordsmiths, people who respect language. If we find ourselves stuck behind a firewall, often the only way to get our meaning across is by writing it down.

We organize our thoughts on paper, detail those hidden questions of why, how, what, where and when. Thinking we've expressed ourselves in a coherent way, at the very least, presenting our point of view in a way that reflects our actual thoughts on an issue. We mistakenly think the reader, the recipient of our missive, will be in the same calm state of mind as we were when we wrote out our letter. Sometimes they are so passionate about their point of view that the mere sight of a letter can enrage them a second time. 'You're using your words against me,' I've been told.

It reminds me of the reaction I'd occasionally receive when gifting a person a piece of jewellery for Christmas. Because I was in the business, there was some assumption that it didn't cost me anything. HA! HA! Though I spent almost forty years in the industry, nothing came to me without cash trading hands. The fact that I could get twice as much for my money buying wholesale somehow translated into a lesser effort or value to some recipients.

That same assumption sometimes rears its head with writing. Because words come easier to me, I've encountered people who think less of what I say because I'm practiced in language. If I am not understood one way, I'll try another. Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher was published and lauded for his thoughts about communication, once stated, "the responsibility to communicate lies with the speaker."

I've found that people prefer lies to truth. Liars can often achieve a higher level of communication satisfaction and approval simply because they tell people what they want to hear. There's a fifty-fifty chance that they'll be caught in a lie, but then again, half the time they get away with it. And sometimes, their emotions run so deep that they can't separate the truth from the convictions they hold.

There are also people who credit themselves with truth, but suffer the blame, the sins of omission, glossing over all the facts and burrowing into the ones that will give their side of an issue more credence. Is half the story a lie when the highlighted version is truthful? I suppose everyone needs to decide the answer for themselves. I have a personal relationship with truth that forms the core of my integrity.

Being called a liar is the most grievous of all accusations against me. When someone measures my truth against a clouded and emotionally charged fabrication, it's a signal that I have failed to communicate. At a crossroad, I have to admit that anything I might say will not be heard. And although it's hard for most of us to admit--nobody cares about the truth--mine or theirs. It's a fight or flight reaction. For me, I chose neither. I simply shut down.

As Harry Chapin once sang in a song, "sometimes words can serve you well, and sometimes they can go to hell...for all that they do."