Let's Be Honest

What's wrong with honesty? I think I've caused myself, and apparently others, more grief by being honest than if I had lied. When did lying become such an integral part of how we interact? With Adam and Eve, I suppose, if you put stock in that.
Some people lie to protect or benefit themselves. Lying can produce tangible gains, like when people take credit for something they didn't do and get a promotion. Or people lie to their spouses or significant others and say they're not cheating. I guess they think they're protecting their lives at home while still being able to cozy up to someone else. If the life at home is worth protecting, then why venture out at all? As a trial run to see if they really want to give up their current lives? That doesn't work, because the parallel life is just bullshit from the start. When people put on their best faces, as in the early stages of a relationship, they're not being entirely truthful. So the person with whom one has an affair likely isn't exactly honest. And even if that person is honest, the relationship isn't. The principals don't have to deal with money issues and kid raising and illness and family affairs and how sometimes someone looks real good and other times not so much.
Sometimes lying appears to derive from self-preservation. Officer, I had one drink, when really it was one drink every 20 minutes for two hours. Worth a shot, I guess. O.J. got away with a big lie, so it does pay off sometimes.
Lies at other times can appear to be virtuous, like the guys who lied about their ages so they could fight in wars. And sometimes people lie to protect other people. But when they do so, they take something away from the other person. I'd rather have someone tell me the truth and then decide for myself what I want to do with that. People too often assume they know how another person will react. Maybe that's right at times, but maybe they don't give the other person enough credit, or at least the ability to decide for themselves. Then, when the lie gets exposed, the relationship is in a worse position than it would have been had the person told the truth in the first place.
For other people, lying appears to be a game. They've gotten away with it, so they do it again. And they're good at it. They even come to believe their own lies.
Sometimes those who are lied to are party to the lie. We allow other people to get away with lies because we want the lie to be the truth. I think it's in the U2 song "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?" where he sings "You lied to me, 'cause I asked you to." The liar and the person the whom the liar lies each have culpability. I'm over that, though. I've had people lie to me, and I'd rather not have that anymore. "I'll take my sorrow straight," as Iris DeMent says. Of course, it's going to happen. The kids lie. But their lies are understandable. They're so self-interested and afraid of getting in trouble that they can't help themselves. Some grow out of it, and some don't. If nothing else, I want my kids to grow up to be honest and willing to accept responsibility for their actions.
The Ten Commandments say you shouldn't lie, the part about bearing false witness against your neighbor. I'm too busy coveting my neighbor's ox to bear false witness. Apparently even Catholic people don't abide by them. I didn't know that.
So, how much of what we see is a lie. The maxim that "nothing is ever as it seems" appears pretty close to the truth. "Pretty Close to the Truth" is a Jim Lauderdale song. There's also a line in a Joe Henry song in which he says he never cared much for truth. Maybe that's the key. Maybe I've cared way too much about truth. And what's the difference, anyway? Does it matter in the end? And what is truth, as asked by Johnny Cash, and Kid Rock. House says lies form the foundation of all successful relationships. That's the fictional character House, played by Hugh Laurie, to whom I apparently have many similarities. The fictional and real House. But, really, how much of what we see in a person truly represents that person? Much less than we think, I think. But we idealize. We need to idealize. We need diversions. We need to see things the way they're not because, well, we just can't handle the truth.
Maybe my epitaph can be: The stupid son of a bitch didn't lie enough.

Football

We in the U.S. know it as soccer, but most of the world calls it football. Football makes more sense to me, since, well, the players primarily use their feet, except for the goalie. I played soccer for a number of years, all the way through college, and it largely funded my education.
Nevertheless, I have a few gripes:
--I don't know of any other game in which a team that has possession so frequently puts the the ball up for grabs. For example, goal kicks generally don't appear to be intended for a particular player as much as for a general area of the field. The same applies to goaltender punts; here it is, go up and get it. Of course, the opposing team stands as much of a chance of coming up with the ball as the goaltender's own team.
--Injury time, also known as stoppage time, consists of minutes added to the game clock after regular time has expired. The additional minutes ostensibly make up for time lost to injuries over the course of a game and the time it has taken a referee to hand out yellow-card cautions and red-card ejections. Part of the problem appears to be that the referee is the only person with knowledge of how much time needs to be added. Maybe someone else keeps track. I don't know for sure. But it seems subjective. And, if a team has a free kick because of an opponent's infraction, and stoppage time subsequently expires, the referee allows it, as far as I can tell. I suppose that doesn't differ greatly from U.S. football, in which a game can't end on a defensive penalty. But what about the stoppage time to account for the injuries, yellow cards, etc. that occur during the first stoppage time? Stoppage time could have no stopping point because the referee has to continually add on for the delays in each previous stoppage-time session. And why not just stop the fucking clock as you go along? The clock stops for injuries and substitutions and out-of bounds plays in basketball and football and hockey.
--Penalty kicks can determine the outcome of a game, even the World Cup final. For those who don't know, a penalty kick involves just two players: the goalie and the kicker, who has an advantage in that he gets to shoot from 12 yards away with nobody between him and the keeper. Basically, if a player can shoot hard and not miss the net, which is 8 feet high by 24 feet long, he should score. Sometimes the goalkeeper guesses correctly when he picks a side to which to dive and stops the shot, but it pretty much shouldn't happen. Five shots per team in a shootout. If the score remains tied, then each team shoots once until somebody misses and the other makes. Hockey uses shootouts to determine winners of tie games during the regular season, but not so in the playoffs. They play until someone scores. So why can't soccer teams do the same? Probably because so few fucking goals occur and the game could last for 10 hours.
--As the World Cup recently demonstrated, referees remain fallible. England wasn't credited with a goal for a ball that clearly crossed the line. The referee disallowed a U.S. goal for reasons nobody can discern. Argentina received credit for a goal against, I think, Mexico despite the offsides position of the scorer. So, referees screw up. No big news there. But soccer officials appear to adamantly refuse to resort to video replays, even for disputed goals. I'm not sure how ensuring that calls are correct detracts from the game, but then there would be even more stoppage time to add for the time consumed during video reviews.
--Perhaps soccer's most disturbing feature derives from the drama. Not the drama of narrowly missed opportunities during a hotly contested match, but the drama when every one of these motherfuckers finds himself on the receiving end of a foul. If you've never seen a professional soccer game--and the higher the level, the greater the drama--you should watch just for this. Nearly every time a foul occurs, the victimized player screams out in agony and writhes in pain as if, I don't know, someone had just disemboweled him. In fact, disembowelment might be a suitable penalty for the perpetrator of such drama. If hockey players acted that way, they'd be run out of the game. Hockey players get teeth knocked out and finish the game. They get stitched up and reappear on the ice in five minutes.

Hurt

I focused on the pain, the only thing that's real. --Nine Inch Nails

It gets boring if you talk about your hurts too long. --A Florida fishing captain, as related in the book "Fly Fishing for Sharks."


What do we do with the hurt, the hurt that has been visited upon us and that we have brought to bear on others? The hurt that has accumulated in us like mercury in fish tissues, sometimes seeping out like toxins, rotting the flesh, revealing itself as each slice of the fillet knife peels away another layer?
One option involves suppression. One therapist with whom I spoke likened it to stuffing dirty socks down your pants. They get musty after a while. Some people appear capable of tucking those dirty socks away and apparently not thinking about them again. They create their own reality and exclude such poisons. To some extent, I envy people with this capability. I can't do it. Maybe if I practice.
Another option involves confronting the hurt head-on. This approach has its drawbacks, principally sadness. I think some people might be biologically predisposed to dwell on the hurt. Still others appear to believe that it elicits sympathy or otherwise makes them noticeable.
People can cross a point at which pains becomes so much a part of their fiber that no way exists to completely escape. Cognitive therapy can help manage the pain. Hard-to-implement techniques exist that can help one to, instead of dwelling on the pain, letting it flow on down the river, away, out to the sea. One ally in letting the pain go would be a faulty memory. A sharp memory can be as much a curse as blessing. Maybe electroconvulsive therapy's effectiveness stems partly from memory impairment.
The optimal approach to dealing with life's tribulations would be to acknowledge them, process them and let them take their rightful place in the dustbin of history. Doing so would free a person from the burden of bearing so much weight so much of the time. You also wouldn't be the person who lives a life denying that the pain ever existed in the first place. Such denial informs all manner of subsequent relationships and deprives them of the potential richness.
But, alas, this resembles a voice in the wilderness. Most people I've observed go about living within the cocoon of their own perceived reality, wary of venturing forth for fear of the predatory bird awaiting beyond the shelter. And they don't know how to contend with the other strange creature, the one who acknowledges the pain, the one whose candor takes people aback, whether that person has let the pain go or not.
Kids, as with everything else, complicate the matter. Their disappointments pose much more of a challenge. I can process my own pain, rationalize in a way that might make me feel better and ultimately face up to it. But I can't get inside their heads and give them the coping techniques or the fortitude. The inability to do that compromises my capability to lessen my distress that has resulted from their distress.

Subtext

Surely texting validates one's self-worth. I feel better when I receive or send a text because hacking away on my cellphone makes me fit in with the multitudes, the people on the train or on the sidewalk or driving the car next to me.
Maybe they're all tweeting. Maybe I should tweet. I have a bunch of stuff to say, some of which might seem familiar. A sampling:

--Mean people suck.
--Sometimes girls with prominent breasts wearing tight-fitting, low-cut shirts act like you shouldn't be looking at them. What's up with that?
--Save Darfur.
--Save the whales.
--Let go and let God.
--Always give 110%.
--I had oatmeal for breakfast (after I put in a good workout...woo-hoo!).
--Here I am walking.
--Here I am on the train.
--Here I am driving (woo-hoo!!).