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PLEASE listen.
To just decide I’m not gonna lie, I’m not gonna go along with these lies, is the most liberating thing you can do. Whether it leads to professional success or failure, it doesn’t matter. It enhances you as a person. That makes you stronger. Every time you tell the truth, you become stronger, you feel this power coming into you. By contrast, every time you lie, you get smaller, weaker and more afraid. Think about the times you’ve lied in your life to hide something from someone else. You become smaller and more afraid, and the more you lie. It’s been this amazing and beautiful experience for me to be in the face of all these lies and feel like I don’t have to go along with this at all.THAT is what all religions mean by confession and repentance, and it's not religious mumbo jumbo; it is sage advice from the hundreds of thousands of years we've been here. THIS is the Tao.
The most important experience in the life of a man is humiliation and failure, and I was not only wrong about Iraq, but I was so wrong that I was humiliated by it. […] Not only did I support it against my better instincts but I also attacked people who didn’t support it by suggesting they were like unpatriotic or on the side of terrorism. I really used the lowest possible propaganda techniques to smear people who disagreed with me. And then, I went to Iraq in the winter of 2003 right after the invasion, and my life changed forever. And, the reason it changed was because I realized how wrong I was, and I made the decision that I had to admit it and I did admit it in December of 2003 in a NYT interview. […] I remember thinking I’m making a permanent break with my old life now, because people won’t accept this, but I just couldn’t continue A to tell lies and B to pretend that I hadn’t previously told lies, because I had. So, I do think the beginning of all wisdom is acknowledging just how screwed up you are. That’s the basis of Christianity but it’s also the basis again of temporal human wisdom. It’s like I’m the problem, I screwed it up, I am not God - if you start there, you’re much more likely to wind up at the truth. So, I just made a decision and it’s hardened over the years and now it’s just iron clad. I’m not lying, like I’m just not gonna lie. I’m almost 54, not gonna live forever. I don’t care, I’m not gonna lie.
As things get shittier and people become worse and tell more lies, there is balance in the universe where a certain percentage of people decide "Well, I’m not lying anymore and I don’t care."
pipe up any time....
