January 28, 2008

• Who do I believe?

  Once, a couple of decades ago, I had a distressing exchange of letters with a man I considered a client.  He had asked me for a reading.  A few months after I did his reading, I sent him a routine follow-up seeking to discover why I hadn’t gotten any response to the reading or any payment.  I had specifically asked for feedback, and thought it only fair that someone who had requested and received a service from me would either pay or say why he wouldn’t pay.

  He returned my feedback form, saying that the advice in the reading might be useful to him if the information was true, but he had no way to evaluate the truth of it, so he disregarded it, “considering the source.”  It wasn’t that I was just unknown to him, but that I was a mail-order psychic who didn’t demand payment in advance.  That made me automatically suspect in his opinion.

  He came to mind today as I was thinking about who I believe and how I decide what to believe.  I can believe nobody all of the time.  Some people contradict themselves so often or tend to exaggerate or fantasize so much, that it would be easy to disregard everything they say.  However, I don’t do that.  I try to evaluate each statement from those unreliable sources on its own merits.  This makes interactions with them troublesome, so I tend not to communicate with them as often as with more reliable sources.

  Some people I consider to be generally reliable sources are also tricksters.  My wisest mentors and teachers, whose words usually carry enlightenment, joy and peace, tend on occasion to throw in an absurdity or a subtle misstatement as a test or just to shake things up.  Also, even the most enlightened of beings is capable of being misinformed or deluded in some areas.  So I can’t just relax and absorb every word from even my most reliable sources.

  Greyfox called a little while ago.  One of the things he mentioned was that my newspaper horoscope for today said I would be, “tired but happy.”  The paper, the Anchorage Daily News, recently underwent a change of ownership and along with less hard news, more fluff and puff pieces, and a bunch of new funnies, they have a new astrologer.  Neither Greyfox nor I likes this one as much as we did the old one, but that “tired but happy,” line was spot on for me today.  Of course, I have no excuse for being tired, and have nothing special to make me happy, which may or may not validate that astrologer.  The fact that I’m usually tired, and generally happy for no reason at all would tend to invalidate it.

  With my guys, Doug (adult son) and Greyfox (spouse and soulmate), I can usually tell if a statement is credible by some clues in voice and body language.  Lacking that, I have to rely on whether their words are supported by their actions, or else I just have to consider the source.  Each of them has areas in which he is generally reliable and other areas where he tends to lie or, to cut them some slack, to be self-deluded or in denial.

  A while back, Greyfox was on the speaker phone, telling me how he had been using me in the forums at totse.com as an example of honesty and integrity.  When I tried to tell him that I’m not all that high and holy, he said I was also a paragon of humility.  He went on to call me “admirable.”  Doug had been listening without comment until that point.  He chimed in to agree, and to add that, “It’s not easy to live with.”  Greyfox laughed and agreed with him.   He said just because I’m admirable, doesn’t mean I’m particularly likable.  Given the choice, I prefer to be trustworthy, accurate, truthful… just being myself.  I don’t need to be liked, but I like to be believed.

  

  • 9:59 pm
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