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From the Editor's Desk
It's so lonely when
you don't even know yourself. It probably starts in grade school, maybe earlier. The cast of characters in our childhood worlds - parents, friends, teachers - directly or indirectly set us on the paths to what will become our life goals (doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs). And around this time they usually outline the rules, the lines we must stay between while we chase our dreams: Don't steal. Don't cheat. Never lie. The consequences for these transgressions, they tell us, are greater than the corollary punishments that church or school or the law will supply. At stake is our credibility, our sense of self. It probably starts in college, maybe earlier. The events that directly or indirectly affect the likelihood that we will reach our life goals do not occur with the black-and-white surety and finality we've been taught to expect. Our coworker gets promoted because he has a competing job offer, not because he is loyal to the firm; we tell our girlfriend about a drunken transgression at a bachelor party during the first week of our relationship many months earlier and we get dumped. Honesty, it seems Mr. Lincoln, is not the best policy. So we dissemble. Slightly at first - an embellishment here, an omission there - and we reach a moral crossroad. Do we rectify the half truths with the people involved, or do we sweep them under the rug? We wrestle with the notion that perhaps a small lie is better than the harsh truth. We take personal stock: "If I didn't calculate, plot or scheme, if I merely transposed some facts that ended up being to my benefit, I am still an honest man, right?" And this is where things get complicated. The degree of the lie may be important, but the frequency of the lies may be more important. The mind is a clever negotiator. For if the degree is minor but the frequency is often, the mind will supply the crutch: "There is no lie; there is no embellishment because I believe the event actually happened." Soon, believing it happened becomes synonymous with it happening. Frequency equates to practice, and the mind becomes more dexterous in its machinations. Soon, we believe what we need to meet our ends before we can acknowledge the falsity of the belief. Soon reality blends with fantasy. Soon we don't know ourselves. This construct came to life in vivid Technicolor during Bill Clinton's appearance on 60 Minutes in June. Forget party affiliations, or whether Clinton lied more or less than current or past presidents. The simple fact is, Clinton lied. Directly (Gennifer Flowers) and indirectly ("my administration created 22 million jobs."). When Dan Rather queued an old clip of Clinton's deceased mother extolling her son during a campaign interview, Clinton, looking just off-center of the camera, became misty-eyed and "overcome" by the moment and said "I never saw that." And I believe he lied again. The thought that a clip of Clinton's mother appearing on a national news program and commenting on her son's moral fiber escaped his legions of press secretaries and campaign aides is too much for me to bear. But saying "I never saw that" to give the 60 Minutes viewing public a chance to share in an original, personal moment of Bill's, rather than simply saying "Oh, I forgot about that old clip" was too much for his mind to resist. Drama makes good interviews. Drama sells books. It's a subtle thing, the difference between saying you forgot an old, relatively meaningless news clip and saying you just experienced it for the first time. But these are the subtleties we employ when the truth just doesn't quite get us to our goal. These subtleties are dangerous - for present and past presidents, and for the rest of us as well. When you reach your golden years, when you take stock of your life again, will your mind give you the facts you need to make a fair assessment? Or will the embellishments seem real, the omissions truly nonexistent? You are not Bill Clinton. You will not have legions of biographers and reporters whose works you can consult to revisit truth. You'll have only what your mind allows, and if you can't trust it, you may be very lonely. For more Editor's Desk columns, visit the Archives via the button to your left. For last month's column click here. |
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