Difficult Truth or Comfortable Lie ?

Yesterday, my day started with virtual church on the deck, proceeded to a sun-splashed 4 mile run around my peaceful Short Pump neighborhood, and ended with Leonardo’s pizza for dinner and the last fire of the season.

The juxtaposition of the peace of my day, the soft glow of the fire, with the destruction, chaos and raging fires burning in cities all across this country was not lost on me. In fact, these days it’s hard to avoid the contradictions of American life. On a weekend that found American cities engulfed in hatred and flames, an eccentric billionaire scientist/entrepreneur managed to put two astronauts into orbit and eventually place them in the International Space Station flawlessly, a feat never before accomplished by a private company. But this has always been the story of America, one of outrageous contradiction. On the one hand, limitless opportunity for the bold and daring, on the other bitter divisions and deep racial hatreds. My countrymen are capable of heroic selflessness, unparalleled innovation, breathtaking art. But we’re also capable of pettiness, silly unserious leadership, epic waste, and virulent racism. Within us lie the seeds of greatness and the stain of our original sin. What an impossible, miserable, maddening mess we are.

In the middle of this year, 2020, with all of its disappointments, I’m writing another story. The gist of it centers around the following question. What would happen to someone if all of a sudden they no longer had the ability to A. Knowingly tell a lie, and B. Resist the temptation to speak the truth at all times? In other words, what would life be like if no insincere word ever crossed your lips? So far, my protagonist is having a heck of a hard time. I guess the idea for the story came to me because of how much truth has been devalued over the past few years. Everyone says they want the truth, everyone decries the fact that it is so damn hard to know what the truth is anymore. But, do we really? Suppose we aren’t nearly as interested in the truth as we think we are? Suppose what we really want is the attractive and far more comforting...lie? Indeed, how much of our daily lives are dependent upon the lies we freely tell each other? The more I write this story the more difficult and uncomfortable it feels. Sort of like...2020.