Be Yourself; Everyone Else Is Already Taken!
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“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken!” Oscar Wilde
It’s pretty easy to spot the guys who are doing their best Gary V impressions… I get light-headed waiting for them to breathe. And while it’s worked well for Gary, everyone else comes across as a wannabe Gary.
The beauty of originality is its singularity. Everyone has their unique fingerprint and voice print and personality. You’re far better served to understand more about what makes you interesting than trying to copy anyone else. Because no one does you like you do you.
I Knew He Was Lying By the Way He Said He Wasn’t!
Oh, I really don’t like liars and cheaters! Well, who does? But this one guy was so transparent in his fibbing to me that he deserves to be written about here. It happened last week, when my husband and I drove to Coney Island to check it out- I’d never been there.
We get there and look for a place to park. I see a big, abandoned lot that has cars in it, and drive in. There’s a man there, directing people where to park. He motioned to us, and I rolled down the window and asked how much it would be.
“$20.” My reaction was pure New York shock, as in “I live here and you’ve got to be kidding me!” It was an empty lot, with broken glass and litter everywhere. I said “$20? That’s too much.”
And then I realized that he was gaming me because I’m a blonde person, native American, with pale skin. He was non-native and not pale. He’s profiling me and trying to rip me off!
“It’s the same price for everyone,” he added. “Believe me.” Well, that’s precisely when I knew he was lying, or he wouldn’t have said it. The added “believe me” made me certain. My trusting husband was meanwhile saying “Just park here Katie-it’s fine!”
But it wasn’t fine, and so I gave the man a pained look and slowly drove away. Two blocks later, I parked on the street, for free. We had a blast just walking around and people-watching, looking at the guys fishing and staring at the ocean.
The best part? We each had a Nathan’s hot dog and an ice cream, for under $20
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire.
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
Abraham Lincoln
Oh, the fibs are flying these days! Brian Williams commits the journalist’s version of “Stolen Valor;” Lance Armstrong drives drunk, crashes and says his girlfriend was at the wheel; and Tom Brady has nooooo idea what happened to his footballs. Really……… REALLY??
Of course not… which makes these lies all the more embarrassing. People, according to Lincoln, are not stupid. At least not all at the same time. It is so easy these days to get to the truth of some matters, with video clips, audio recordings, photos and eyewitnesses, not to mention good old-fashioned common sense.
The temptation to lie seems to be rooted in an instinct to make a person look better, in some way. It might not even matter to others, but to the liar, it’s important. My professor at The New School cautioned our class on plagiarizing, saying that it’s better to hand in nothing at all, rather than a paper that’s been plagiarized. The software to detect it is sophisticated, and she had caught one of her students trying to pass off a paper that wasn’t his. He was expelled from the school.
In the case of a known liar like Lance Armstrong, the hits just keep on coming! He got himself into trouble when he drove his car into some parked cars (“Lance had a little bit to drink”) and then sent his girlfriend scurrying in the snow wearing 6” heels to apologize to the owners of the cars. She said it was all her fault, they would pay for repairs, and then she and Lance took off. The police quickly got to the bottom of things and announced that it was Lance who was the drunk driver. What a guy.
Tell the truth, as best you can, and as often as you can. It’s easier. It’s classier. If you can’t do that, then remember what George Washington said: “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”