Yes, I have told white lies. I'm not going to open this with a performance of moral perfection that nobody would believe anyway, I have looked someone in the face, understood exactly what the truth would do to them in that moment, and chosen something softer. Something safer, something that let them walk away intact, and I have sat with that choice afterward and wondered whether I did the right thing.
That wondering is actually where this whole conversation lives, A white lie, the way most of us understand it, is a lie told to protect rather than to deceive for personal gain, You tell your friend her presentation was great when it was average because she is already nervous and there is nothing she can do to change it now, You tell your relative his business idea has potential because he just invested his savings into it and your brutal honesty at this stage helps nobody, You tell someone their cooking is fine because they made it with love and you are a guest in their home, Small mercies, Tiny fictions we offer each other to keep the day moving.
And honetly? I don't think all of those are wrong, I really don't.
There is a version of radical honesty that is not actually about truth, It is about the satisfaction of saying hard things without caring what they land like, I have met people who use i'm just being honest as a license to be unkind, and they dress it up as integrity, It isn't integrity, Integrity includes knowing when to speak, how to speak, and whether your honesty is serving the other person or just serving your own need to feel righteous, truth without compassion is just cruelty with good branding.
But....
And this is a big but.
White lies have a way of growing in ways you don't plan for , you tell one small comfortable lie and then the next conversation builds on it and suddenly you are maintaining a version of reality that was never real, I have watched this happen, the friend who told someone their relationship looked fine when it clearly didn't, and that person stayed two more years in something damaging because everyone around them kept softening the picture, the family that kept telling a sick person things were okay until the person had no time left to make real decisions about their own life, White lies told with love can still cause damage just delayed, quieter damage that arrives when the person is least prepared for it.
So where does that leave me personally? I think the honest answer is that it depends on what the truth is for, If the truth in this moment genuinely helps the person make a better decision, face something they need to face, or protect themselves from something coming then I will find a kind way to tell it even if it is uncomfortable. I owe people that, not brutality, but honesty wrapped in care.
But if the truth in this moment serves nothing except my own desire to have said it? If it only wounds without offering anything useful? then I will choose my words carefully, not lie exactly, but not volunteer devastation either.
The truth matters, It always matters.
But so does the person you are telling it to.
Both things can be true at the same time, That is the part nobody likes to sit with.
