I know I promised you the ending of my story, and it's coming, it is, in fact, it's mostly done, but lately I've been doing a bit of thinking, about what matters, to me. Not God, the universe, the United States, my family or my wife, just me.
It's been awhile since I've been in that mode of interior investigation. But, tonight, as I was thinking, I thought this thought, "What would you tell everyone in the world if you could only tell them one truth?"
I thought about it. There are a lot of things I think you should know. A lot things I've shared with my students, clients and children over the decades, but there is one key that I think leads to so many others that I can't help but believe that if everyone knew this, the world would be a different place.
So, what is this amazing thought? Well, it's at the root of pretty much everything I say in life. Let me illustrate it by telling you about something that happened today.
I've mentioned before that when I'm in need of some temp work, I head over to a site that used to be called WriterTown, and is now called Listiller.com. Elvis Michael, the young entrepreneur that runs the site, provides the absolute biggest and best list of writing jobs in the universe. That's because he aggregates the best of the best and puts them on his site.
So, today, I found one that seemed like a gem. It wasn't the highest pay, but it sounded like EZ MUNNNY! Like, I could make a ton of it working for them. So, I fired up my uploader and prepared to shoot my resume out into cyber space, along with a few samples that would blow their socks off. Then I paused.
At the end of the application, there was a dialog box for a "bonus" offering, a 300 word article in the style of their site. I stopped. Even at my stage, I don't like shooting in the dark. Sure, it was just a political news site and I could probably have come up with something, based on the site name, that hit the mark, but I decided to take a look.
I followed the link to their home page and my throat tightened. There, in front of me, was exactly what we've all been warned about, FAKE NEWS! Headline after headline about how she does this with him, and they do that with this, and this person isn't the saint you think they are, and not a word of it appeared to be true. It was a political hit site, designed to establish rapport with one side, by making the other look bad.
I don't take sides.
It's petty, and besides, party politics are what's wrong with the world. they lock us into this false binary understanding of black/white, wrong/right, truth/lies, red/blue, my team/ your team, and I hate it. I thought about it, I really did. I need the steady work to carry me through the holidays. No one makes decisions during the holidays.
Even though I've got what I think are three really solid, new book deals, and a fourth one coming up with great ghostwriting clients, the money was immediate and it looked good. I really didn't even care if the people they were painting with their broad brush looked bad, because most of them honestly are worse than these headlines, but there's a right way to do that, and a wrong way, and the wrong way, involves making shit up. I couldn't do it?
Why not?
They were offering the money. From their description, I fit the criteria perfectly. I could write the stuff they want in my sleep, but I don't believe in it. Now, there are some things I don't believe in that I'll write all day long, but they're neutral. I could care less if one small business succeeds over another, provided both are run ethically, but I'll write for them both and do a great job. Why? Because it's my job.
But, there's a line I won't cross to just do my job, and that line is violating my own conscience. I try never to do it.
But, that's not the principle I want to share, exactly. It's connected to it, but it issues out of it. The principle is more foundational than that. It lies under nearly everything in life and it's this.
Things are never exactly as they seem. Or, as the old adage goes, "Never take things at face value." THINK! Explore, research, second guess, question authority, hell, question everything.
Here's the thing, I could have taken that job. I probably would have had some fun and made a bunch of money, but, the price to get in the door, was a tiny corner of my soul. And I knew that it would eat me alive. I just couldn't put my name on that partisan tripe, when I preach non-partisan citizenship.
See, I don't think that compartmentalization is a thing. Well, it is, but it's not. In your head, you can separate yourself into a private life, a family life, a work life, a spiritual life, whatever. You can insulate and separate, you divide and deny that it matters, but you can't change how it effects you.
When you violate your own principles in one area of life, it effects the others. You never know how it will come back, but rest assured, it will. On the outside, no matter how much people pretend not to notice, what happens in Vegas never really stays in Vegas. It comes home to haunt you.
It's the essence of "Do unto others.." to me, it's what Shakespeare meant when he has Polonius advise Hamlet, "To thine own self be true ..."
To me, this one principle underlies everything. I don't do things because my religion dictates it. I don't do things because a political party, candidate, or movement agree with it. I don't do things because society expects it, or even, sometimes, because it is the law of the land. I do them based on what I see to be wrong, and right.
Now, I know, I said earlier on, that right/wrong was a false dichotomy, and many times, what's offered up as right versus wrong is exactly that, a ruse. There are very few "coins" in the world, as in, the other side of the... More likely than not, that issue that's being presented as having only two possible sides, is more like that 20 sided die the DM threw to kill off your dwarf character against the mermen in your freshman year of college.
Actually, it's more than that. There are nearly always an inexhaustible number of potential solutions to any problem. There are always more than two sides to any argument. If you fall for the world's presented options, you'll always do the expected.
So, that's it, my best advice, think things through. Be your own person. Have your own thoughts. It's great to read the advice of "the greats" but don't take them at face value either. You don't have to belong to a "School of Thought" to be a thinker, in fact, it rather inhibits it.
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