strings: To understand this problem, what is a lie and why we lie, one has to go into it without thinking in terms of an opposite. Can we look at this problem of contradiction in ourselves without trying not to be contradictory? Our diffculty in examining this question is, is it not ?, that we so readily condemn a lie but, to understand it, can we think of it not in terms of truth and falsehood but of what is contradiction ? Why do we contradict? Why is there contradiction in ourselves ? Is there not an attempt to live up to a standard, up to a pattern—a constant approximation of ourselves to a pattern, a constant effort to be something, either in the eyes of another or in our own eyes? There is a desire, is there not? to conform to a pattern; when one is not living up to that pattern, there is contradiction.