This morning, as I made my way through my exceedingly excessive list of RSS feeds, I stumbled across an entry from Gruber pointing to a new website. Mike Lee’s Motherfucker. At the time of this writing, Mike only has 2 posts available. I read them both and was immediately blown away. From the first sentence of his first entry, My name is Mike Lee and I invented blogging, I knew I’d found a new favorite.
Mike has a real talent for writing and a solid sense of humor, two things which always fascinate me. I’m funny in person, but it doesn’t always translate well into my writing — something which I’m continually battling. I’m more of a conversational humorist, i.e. I’ll take a conversation and twist it down paths which are funny, thought-provoking and sometimes disturbing. But left to my own devices, without an audience, I’m not so funny. Mike is the writer I’ve been trying to be for a long time.
His post entitled Sincerity Theory really hit home with me. What Mike calls Sincerity Theory closely mirrors what I’ve long called Living Honestly, a theory I developed at a point in my life when my world was crashing around me and my stress level was such that I most likely lost 7-10 years of my life within the space of five months.
I don’t want this post to turn into a confession, but some background is in order.
I’m not happy to admit this, but there was a time in my life when I spent an inordinate amount of time perfecting the art of being dishonest. It’s something I actively pursued. I didn’t always care about the outcome. All that mattered was that I successfully deceived the other person. I’d lie for the sake of lying … to see if I could be convincing. To see if I could, on the fly, fabricated a believable story that would cause the listener to react in some desired fashion. Sometimes it resulted in a material gain to me. Other times I walked away with nothing more than the satisfaction of a job well done.
Hey, I said I wasn’t happy about admitting this. Cut me some slack. I’ve changed. I now know that what I did was very wrong, but the point is, I had become a very convincing and capable liar.
And this was no small thing. In order for a lie to be successful, the listener must believe you. You must communicate things as fact, at least some of which must be verifiable. The most important element is that you believe what you’re saying … or at least appear to believe it. The best deceptions contain some element of truth. The saying The best lie the devil ever pulled off was convincing the world that he didn’t exist contains that truth. The world, as a whole, doesn’t believe the devil exists. But to believe the truth of that statement is an admission that you believe there is a devil. So there’s some wiggle room. There’s some room for error. And the best lies always have that wiggle room … some room for doubt. It lets the listener feel that (s)he has arrived at the conclusion on his/her own. But while it appears to be a two way street, i.e., one that will allow the listener free reign, it’s really a one-way. The chips are stacked against the listener, who only has a few seconds to make a decision. People, for the most part, want to believe you. Once you realize that, you can do anything if you’re willing to be imaginative and deceptive. Carrying an air of authority is a sure path to success. A friend and I once walked into a crowded building and walked out with two 8′ folding tables. No one ever questioned us and, to my knowledge, those tables have never been returned. As we walked in, I told my friend Stay focused and act like you’re supposed to be doing this. No one will say a word. He did and no one did. Within 15 minute of pulling into the parking lot we were driving away with the tables.
After I graduated from law school and had taken the bar exam, I moved back to Odessa and into my parents’ house. I took the bar exam in late May and would not have the results back until November. The Odessa/Midland area in Texas isn’t known for ample and available employment, so I didn’t have much of a choice. I intended to open a law office in Odessa, so it only made sense to move back home.
But what I’d left behind began haunting me. My lies and deceits began keeping me awake at night. I’d done some pretty bad things, and as my conscious crawled back to life, I started feeling really bad. One of the sayings I’d been somewhat known for was Life is easy once you sever your conscious, and now that I’d gone a few weeks with no deceptions and no desire to continue down that path, my conscious had slowly come back to life. And with it came a shit load of guilt, depression and humility. I spent a lot of time talking to the ceiling/God, depending on your beliefs.
This slowly began spiraling out of control. Again, I’d done a lot of bad things. Oh, I hadn’t killed anyone and no one would be too bad off due to my deceptions, but I’d crossed a line. That line that separates decent from garbage. And I had spent too much time on the wrong side of the line. It all came crashing down.
During this time, I spent a lot of time at my parent’s house alone. They were out working jobs while I was looking for something temporary. Something to make life worthwhile while I awaited the exam results. At some point, between interviews, I ended up watching Fargo. This is an excellent movie, and I highly recommend it. William H. Macy plays Jerry Lundegaard, and it’s an Academy-worthy performance. Without giving away too much of the plot, Jerry has hired some people to do some very bad things. But Jerry can’t handle it. Oh, he thinks he’s capable, but he’s not prepared for the evil his hirelings are capable of performing. He’s nervous and wired. Frances McDormand plays Marge Gunderson, a low-keyed, even-handed police officer. She won an Oscar for her performance. Macy was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and, in my opinion, should’ve won it.
There’s a scene where Marge visits Jerry at his workplace, a car lot. Jerry is unbelievably nervous while trying to come off as smooth and unruffled. Marge is the penultimate of innocence. While Jerry is stumbling with his excuses, Marge never waivers. She continues to look at him very innocently and ask seemingly innocuous questions. The scene perfectly played out everything I’d been struggling with. One one hand, you had the deceptive person who was intent on continuing to lie. On the other, you had the innocent and unassuming person who only wanted answers.
As the scene was playing out before me, I was struggling with ten thousand things. I was not enjoying the movie, but could not bring myself to change the channel. And then it hit me. Like a bolt of lightning splitting the darkness, I saw it.
Marge was living honestly.
She had no fear and nothing to hide because she lived honestly. Transparently. When someone asked her a question, she had nothing to hide. She was who she was and she was perfectly comfortable with that. She accepted herself for who she was, she had a plan for her life, and she was moving steadfastly toward it. She was honest with herself and, as such, had no need to be dishonest in any of her dealings.
How simple is that? How beautiful is that? That’s the essence of life. Live honestly.
At that point, I determined to change the course of my life. I determined to live honestly. First and foremost to be honest with myself in all things. Second, to communicate honestly with those I came in contact with.
It’s difficult to explain what happened next. It was like a world of weight dissipated and everthing became clear. Focused. I could think clearly. As the lies pealed off of me, I slowly began to find myself. I slowly became happy with myself again. With every lie that died, my smile ticked up a notch. I found myself holding my head high, confident. I found me. I rediscovered myself. And my family. It’s hard to explain, but we immediately became closer than we’d ever been and to this day I could them among my best friends.
Be honest with yourself and those around you. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Life is what it is. Being honest about it, regardless of what “it” is, only makes you stronger. And that strength will resonate into the lives of those you touch.
Honest. Sincerity. Whatever you want to call it. It’s a powerful thing.
Technorati Tags: honesty, life, sincerity
