It's All Performance Art 10

I learned a long time ago, when I was beginning in street ministry, a very important lesson that has always stayed with me. I was being regaled with such tall tales, such absolute whoppers by attention seeking and responsibility evading street people and various people of the night, that in order to cope, I had to find a way of cutting them slack without getting drowned in their lying. I also had to cope with the same lying nonsense coming from alleged Christians, particular Anglicans and often from clergy. Everyone wanted to cover their ass, somehow, or wanted somehow to save face for themselves by sparing my feelings. This still happens in church. How am I to know that people who aren't praising my singing voice are really just wishing I would shut up during hymns? So, I sing in a much quieter voice now. I don't know what they're thinking, but I do know that they will tell me only what they think I want to hear. Likewise about my art. Lots of people praise my drawing and painting, but when it comes to actually supporting me as an artist and buying something, they all become mysteriously absent, or they have their laundry lists of excuses. Occasionally someone does buy something, but it doesn't happen very often. Praise is cheap. And easy. And false. People lie. Constantly. And everyone does it. Maybe some are less untruthful than others, but surveys and research have shown that everyone does it. We are absolute shameless liars, all of us. Even me, at times, though I really try to minimize it. We lie for all kinds of reasons, but primarily we do it to cover our own sorry little ass. Learning this has taught me another invaluable lesson. Even when they are being truthful, most people are only going to tell you as much as they feel you deserve to know, and they are going to tell you what they believe you want to hear. I still try to resist my own natural tendency towards lying, because integrity matters to me. I have also been lied to so much, for so long, and by so many, that I simply offer everyone the benefit of the doubt, even if it's going to be the benefit of MY doubt. We are always busy at creating and constructing our own private beautiful fictions, and those beautiful fictions help us to cope with a world and a life that at the very best is going to look bleak, barren and ugly. Or does it have to? What if you are a person of faith and hope, a person of love, such as I aspire to be, and which many people of faith aspire to be? What if the truth is actually something every bit as beautiful as it is terrible? Something that exists well outside of and beyond our private fictions. When someone tells me something, I neither believe nor disbelieve them. I simply accept that that is what they have told me, what they want me to hear. That is enough. Would I prefer the truth? Well, usually. Even if it's going to make me bleed? Well, no, but also yes. The truth does set us free. If we want to be free. And maybe this is why we try to avoid the truth, why we like to shun it. Maybe most of us really don't want to be free. We want lives that are grounded in illusion, predictability, order, a kind of existence that fosters our sense of control. The truth is never friendly to those of us who want to be always in control, to be always in charge. The truth is particularly nasty to those of us who want to be God. Which is to say, almost every last one of us, Gentle Reader.