Doing More Than You Ever Thought You Could, Now With Jokes to Offend Everyone.

“Master betrayed us.  Wicked.  Tricksy.  False.  We ought to wring his filthy little neck.  Kill him!  Kill him!  Kill them both!  And then we take the Precious . . . and we be the master!” – Lord of the Rings

After this, I doubt he’ll help out and eat my homework anymore.

The Mrs. and I had a discussion – in one respect I think my personality disturbs her.  Okay, it’s more than one respect.  The Mrs. has a list of 73 items, but several of them have multiple parts.  Thankfully for you, this post is only about one.

A while back, The Mrs. was watching an episode of Arrested Development, and thought that there was a really funny segment so she shared it with me.  The setup is that George Michael has set up a fraudulent software company that he thinks is worthless, but has a really hot investor that wants to buy it.  Maeby is his cousin.

Most investors look like Bernie Madoff, or Bernie Sanders, or um, I seem to be out of Bernies.

Maeby:  She’ll get all our liabilities, and then anything over two million, we get to keep.

George Michael:  I can’t do that to someone that I have feelings for.

Maeby:  So stop having feelings for her.

George Michael:  What?  Is that something you can do with people?

Maeby:  Yeah, once I learned how to do it with my parents, it was easy with everyone else.

It’s like a heart switch, you know?

Click.

I love you.

Click.

I love you not.

Click.

I love you.

Click.

I love you not.

Can’t you do that?

George Michael:  No, but in my defense, I’m not a sociopath.

[DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS]

Maeby:  Click.

The Mrs. looked at me.  “Isn’t that funny?”

My response, which probably troubled The Mrs. a bit was, “Can’t you do that?”

The reality is I can’t do it with everyone.  Just like most people, I worry about those close to me when they’re ill.  Just like most people, I feel a great loss when those who are close to me pass away, and cry at their funerals.  At my funeral, I hope at least one person shouts in the middle of the eulogy, “Look . . . it’s . . . it’s . . . moving.”  I’ll have $100 in my jacket pocket waiting for you if you do that.

Let’s put the Fun in funeral.  And the freak back in Ruffles®.  Because I’m out of freakin’ Ruffles™.

But I can do it with people who I trusted who betray me.  If you’re on my side, I expect you to be on my side.  It doesn’t mean that you have to agree with me, in fact, if I trust you and I’m wrong, I expect you to tell me I’m wrong:  I welcome my friends telling me when they think I’m wrong.  The greatest loyalty is truth – we save pretty lies for polite company.

I told Jesus he should unfriend Judas on Facebook®.  Heck, Judas doesn’t even have hiking sandals.

And the closer you are to me, the greater the expectation of loyalty.  And the second that you betray me, that switch flips, click.  It’s not hate.  It’s not anger.  It’s . . . nothing.  You’re not dead – I would mourn that.  You’re dead to me, and I would rather not have you in my life than to have someone I don’t trust in my life.

Click.

I’m not 100% honest.  I wish I was, but I’m not.  I generally won’t lie, but I’ll certainly answer questions selectively because daily interactions with people require that sort of lubrication of unmentioned truth.  “Do these pants make my butt look big?”

“No.”  The unwritten truth?

“It’s your butt that makes your butt look big.”

The Mrs. has never asked me that question, and the reason is obvious.  I feel loyalty to The Mrs., and if she asked me that question, she’d better be prepared for the answer.

But the real question is can we tell the truth to ourselves?  I think the greatest betrayal can come not only from the outside:  I think that often we are the source of our own greatest betrayal.  I can be honest with those closest to me.  Oh, sure, I call it honesty, but they can’t seem to stop calling it “John’s being a jerk again.”

But can I be honest with myself?

I think there is an actual Jerk Phonebook.  It’s called Twitter.  Yeah, I’ve been there a time or two.

I think that’s the difficult part.  Being honest with yourself is hard – I think that the brain is wired to make it difficult.  I was watching a YouTube® video where a psychologist was working with an anorexic girl.  He compared the size of his thigh to the size of the girl’s thigh.  She didn’t see any difference.  The psychologist jumped up on a table covered with paper and used a marker to outline his thigh with the marker.  He challenged the girl to do the same.

It was only then when she sat down on the paper and compared her leg’s width to the width of the leg of the psychologist that she saw how painfully thin her thigh really was – her brain interpreted the size of her leg to be much bigger than it was.  There was genuine surprise.  She wasn’t faking anything – it’s just that her perceptions were out of line with reality.

Watching that brought the question that still echoes in my mind.  How much of the perceptions of reality that you or I have are wrong?  What do our brains do to fool us about ourselves?  How far will our egos go to protect their sense of self?

Freud:  Invented the Ego and the originator of “Your Momma” jokes.

How often do we betray ourselves?  How often does your brain tell you that you can’t go on, you can’t keep it up, that you can’t take another step?

Don’t believe it when it betrays you.  You can go on.  You can keep it up.  You can take another step.

Time after time, I’ve seen people accomplish things that there is no way that they should be able to do.  The problem wasn’t them – they accomplished it – the problem was my brain.  It said something was impossible that clearly could be done.

We fail because we don’t make our dreams larger.

It’s Friday.  Do something that you’ve always wanted to do but had thought impossible.  Make something great happen.  You can.

And the part of my brain that tells me I can’t do it?  The part of your brain that says you can’t do it?

Click.