“If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody come sit next to me.”
Good Morning,
What’s up TikTok generation? How are those attention spans doing? Want to try something CRAZY?!? Go outside your house or apartment and leave your phone, wallet, and keys inside. Walk around for 10 minutes and try not to freak out. Can you do it? Next time you run a quick errand, just leave your phone at the house. Who knows? Maybe it will be liberating.
In Issue 28 we evaluated wisdom. We questioned everything. So much conventional wisdom contradicts itself. It was a frustrating journey to discover maybe wisdom is dead. We are driving sans GPS. We are Lewis and Clark without Sacagawea. We are me driving around Chattanooga without Niki telling me where to go. However, as I sit here this morning, I believe I’ve found the skeleton key. If it rhymes, it must be true. Think about it: An apple a day keeps the doctor away. We all know that to be truth. Why? It rhymes. Don’t just talk the talk, walk the walk. A third example I can totally think of because the rule of three. These are the bedrocks of wisdom. In analyzing this and discussing it with other scholars, I found maybe the most controversial piece of wisdom: Honesty is the best policy. While this is commonly agreed on, does it fit our criteria of bedrock truth? On first read you might think, “Why yes it does because it rhymes!” Of course you would say that. You’re a layman. Us in the writing biz would call “Honesty is the best policy” a slant rhyme, not an exact rhyme. This must mean it is only sometimes true.
What do we do with sometimes truth? It’s like looking through binoculars or a camera and the view is just a little unclear. Everything in us craves turning that little wheel that brings everything into focus. Let’s attempt to clarify today, is honesty really the best policy?
I used to think the world would crumble if a specific singular event happened. Not a global pandemic as we have all survived, not even a zombie apocalypse as we discussed last week, but rather if Snapchat released everyone’s top three best friends again. Everyone could see their pecking order with their friends and loved ones. I specifically remember being in Walmart in 2012. I was buying a punching bag with a couple of my friends. My buddy’s phone rang. This is what I heard from his side of the conversation, “I’m sorry… I know… I know… I’m sorry… I will… I love you… ok…” He then turned to us and said, “Apparently, if you change a girl’s name in your phone, it doesn’t change her name on Snapchat for other people.” The best friends feature had busted him despite his genius plan. All of that said, I don’t think people regularly use Snapchat anymore. Therefore, I think a truer, deeper destruction of the relationship fabric that binds all society together would be if every text or email ever written was suddenly universally available to read. Civilization is held together by a fragile web of tactful phrasing, polite omissions, and little white lies. There would be breakups, fist fights, bankruptcy, scandal, resignations, generational feuds, lawsuits, bloodshed in the streets, and lingering ill will tainting every surviving relationship.
I’ve been on the receiving end of a communication not meant for my ears finding me. I know, upon reading that sentence, most of you assumed it was some sort of praise for my work that a bashful fan had not intended for me to hear. While I appreciate your outlook, it was of the less affectionate variety. A frustration of a friend towards a personality trait of mine was seen, by accident, by me. What hurt the most (cue Rascal Flatts) was not that it was untrue, it wasn’t, but rather that it was unsympathetic. Hearing someone else’s uncensored opinions of you is an unpleasant reminder that you are just another person in the world and everyone else doesn’t always view you in the forgiving light that you hope they will. They don’t spend the same energy making allowances, assuming good intentions, or being on your side as you’d like to imagine. There is something sobering and existentially scary about finding out how little room you occupy, and how little allegiance you command, in other people’s hearts. That is not to say your friends are worse friends than you previously thought, nor do those who love you love you less than you believed, quite the opposite. Realizing it is not the natural inclination of everyone around you to assume the best and take your side when misconception may stare them in the face is a stronger endorsement of their loyalty and care when they do those things. Who is the main character and always given the benefit of the doubt in your heart and mind? It’s you. How often do you give the nod to someone else’s opinions over your own initially? Rarely, I imagine.
This possibility for hearing unfiltered truth is not new to texts and emails, but dates back to our ancestors. I’m talking Adam and eavesdropping. Those moments when you hear others describing you without censoring themselves for your benefit are like seeing yourself in the mirror before you have brushed your teeth, combed your hair, and correctly adjusted your face to that of the living. Or maybe, in the digital age, it’s like seeing a candid photo of yourself online not smiling or posing, but looking the way you apparently always look; oblivious and mouth agape. It is simply not pleasant to be objectively observed. It’s proof that you are visible and seen in all your naked silliness and stupidity no matter how hard you try and craft your presentation of yourself. This makes us embarrassed and angry and honestly, screw the people who betrayed us. They are two-faced hypocrites. Which, of course, they are because everyone is.
Gossiping and making fun of eachother is among the most ancient and enjoyable human experiences. I was lucky, in a sadistic way, that I grew up with friends that would take joking jabs at me with a sniper’s execution enough to teach me this is different than real cruelty. Because of course we make fun of the people we love, they are ridiculous. Anyone worth knowing is inevitably going to be also complicated and difficult and exasperating. They, and we, will make the same obvious mistakes over and over again: squandering money, dating fools, relapsing into self-defeating habits, blind to their, and our, own hilarious flaws and fiercely devoted to whatever keeps them, and us, miserable. And those people of whom there is nothing ridiculous, are the most ridiculous of all. It is necessary to make fun of them to take them as seriously as we do. Just as teasing a friend to their face is a way of letting them know you know them better than they think and you’ve got their number so to speak. Making fun of your friend behind their back, if we are going to spin this positively, is a way of bonding with your mutual friends while you reassure each other that you all know, love, and are driven crazy by the same person. Although, let’s admit, we’re often just being mean.
There was a time in high school where I clearly remember someone walking up behind me while I was saying something really clever and witty at that person’s expense. It was one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had. Not just because I had hurt that person, but because it forced me to see a truth about myself; that I made fun of people all the time. People who didn’t deserve it, people who were beneath me on high school’s ridiculous and ill defined social ladder, just to make myself seem funny and cool. I learned a valuable lesson. Why make fun of and put down others when you can just start a newsletter to lift yourself up through self-flattery? In the wise words of Hot Chocolate, Every 1’s a Winner.
I have a couple of friends who are either in AA or have gone through a version of the twelve steps. One of the aphorisms a friend shared from a program they attended was, “What other people think of you is none of your business.” Like a lot of wisdom, this at first sounds suspiciously like nonsense. Obviously what other people think of you is your business. It’s your main job in life to micromanage everyone’s perceptions of you and do tireless PR for yourself. Everyone who ever went on a date with you must pine for you, those who rejected you must regret it. You must be loved and respected and above all, taken seriously. Those who mocked you will one day see their folly. The problem with this is it is insane. It’s dangerously close to the mindset of dictators who regard all dissent as treason and periodically order purges to ensure total and unquestioning loyalty. The operative fallacy here is seeing unconditional love as others not seeing anything negative about you when it really means pretty much the exact opposite.
The classic film Shrek implicitly asks an important question, “Do I want to be loved in spite of…?” Do you? Does anyone? But aren’t we all to some degree? We don’t give other people credit for the same interior complexity we take for granted within ourselves. We all have the same capacity for holding contradictory feelings in balance, for complexly mixed and matched affections, for bottomless generosity from deep in our hearts and petty, sudden anger. We can’t believe that anyone could be unkind to us and still genuinely like and love us, although we do it all the time.
I once read a story about a strange invention. It was a staircase where you could descend deep underground. As you walked, you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was you had to walk through, and hear, all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. I’m not sure I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down that staircase, but I understand its twisted and unfortunate moral: if we want the rewards of being loved, we have to give ourselves over to the mortifying task of being known.
