I Feel Bad

Ok, I have a confession. I told a small lie today and then tried vaguely to back out of it.

Basically the radio in my jeep has now worked for some time. I think the antenna is not properlly wired up to the radio, because it gets reception in certain situations only. Well last week I was hit by another car, crushing the front right corner of the car. When I went to the mechanic today I gave it some thought and decided to mention that I thought the radio reception degraded significantly after the accided and asked if they could take a look at it. Well that was basically a lie that I decided to say so that I could save some money and get the radio fixed for free.

I immediately felt like crap. The act of telling a lie, no matter how insignificant, simply makes me feel bad. I mean literally nauscious. I tried to backpedal out of this one, saying something along the lines of how the radio wasn't that great in the first place and it was probably just my imagination that it got worse after the accident, but the damage had already been done. I still feel like crap.

Then when I get to work today I see this quote on Google:

"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion."

This was said by none other then Abraham Lincoln, and I couldn't agree more.

I have a lot more to say about lying, ethics, and religion, but it'll have to wait for another day. I just felt compelled to share this story. Sometimes things just seem to line up in a way that seems compelling beyond simple coincidence...