A biography may come in any shape or size.
That doesn’t necessarily make it a cretin.
For one thing, people are fine with that, in
general. It certainly seems that way to me,
in any case. Rule number one: everybody
lies. Rule number two: everyone in gen-
eral is a good person. Now it all adds up,
as we have just used the scientific meth-
od to prove that lies are just fine. What’s
the truth, anyway? So there you have one
of my primary rules for living a longer and
healthier life: just don’t make it a problem.
Treat it, like my mother (and countless
other progenitors) used to always find a
way to slip into any day whatever, as
if they to simply roll like water off a
duck’s back. So the next time you have
the occasion to run into someone you
know, are acquainted with or can't recall
their presence beforehand—that is,
when beginning any type of engagement, be
it high or low, short or incredibly long in
the wind department, I suggest your draw
in a breath, try to allow any preconcep-
tions to float some other direction, and
do yourself the favor of giving the whole
honest thing a nice long vacation. Because,
let me be clear, honesty, it’s just not a thing.
Just remind yourself (silently is best) that
you are happening upon a liar. Because you
are. And, especially if this seems like it’s too
big of a problem for you to begin with, you
might disturb the issue altogether away by
making it interesting. For example, I tend
to use as a general means of learning a lot
about people I meet, know, and sleep with
by playing the game of Hm, I Wonder What
THIS Dude Lies About? Navigate through
the whens and the wheres of the missing
pieces until they begin to find logic, reason.
There are, I find, one or two basic reasons
that an individual chooses his or her person-
al line of dishonesty. We’re basically simple
folks, leading pretty simple lives, no matter
how we might even fool ourselves into be-
lieving otherwise [number one most common
lie, as it turns out]. Dishonesty and hypo-
cracy are the real deal, people. Honesty
is just plain bogus. It is, as some say of
more specific hypocritical schemes, a
ludicrous construct. I’m not suggesting
that being truthful isn’t a direction toward
which we should aspire, in the same way
that some do toward the ideal of nirvana.
All I am saying is that the notion that com-
plete transparency or being totally truthy
is bogus (extra hint: check out any compen-
dium on etiquette to discern the moments
in life when the truth is inappropriate). And
not that it is my job in life to point out all of
these whizz-bang discrepancies inside of
which we like to take residence, but when
this subject arises, my mind tends to migrate
toward the paranoiacs who believe Big Brother
might be watching, and that consuming time (cons-
ciously) striving for privacy is a means to get him
off your back (and let’s face it, there are
massive swaths of folks who get piping hot
about the idea that someone may be watching,
or [even] recording them). Whether this find
is a subversion of exhibitionism or a (sub-
conscious) subversion of just plain wishful
thinking, allow me a moment where-
in honesty might be appropriate
and submit for our consideration that
when you spend your precious time on
this bedeviled, beguiling and beautiful
planet worrying about such nonsense, that
it is a complete waste of time, and that it
surely becomes for a lot of us a means to
eliminate no small percentage of our youth.
I am somewhat certain that it is not current-
ly the apocalypse. And I’m pretty sure, as well,
that the inevitable mob of zombies has yet
to make their stiff-walking appearance.
However. Good people. We are sprinting
into the heart of the 21st century and al-
ready well into the post-Big Brother Era:
it’s a freakin’ given that we are, each and all,
being watched. You are not having a night-
mare in which you are the star of a Lifetime
movie about a stalker. There aren’t even
any commercials. You are being watched.
Either in real-time, or via recording. May I
therefore offer that perhaps rather than walk-
ing around in a constant state of paranoia,
that we take for granted that all the world
is, indeed, a stage (and that the surveillance
crew is just beyond the audience)? Can’t we all
just take that piece of news and slip it into our
worry-free pockets? Or, better yet, let our
crocodile tears roll down the downy back
of a duck and worry about the bigger
problems in life; the problems that can
literally be adjusted? And then, I say,
take a little bit of that extra time that
you’ll soon find you have on your hands
and milk every ounce of joy you can out
of every minute you can; out of each
turnip of a day you wake up to find
yourselves in. It’s just a suggestion.
But it seems to do pretty well by me.
