I’m amazed by people whose relationship to the truth is variable. They’ll do and say whatever benefits them in a particular situation. They believe in these chameleon-like changes as they make them. Hoping to learn their secret I’ve tried to study them, thinking that I may one day live life like the Universe was put in place especially for me.
Adaptability is the key. If a situation changes, you change, too. That way, you never have to feel the stress of change, it becomes normal, if only for a moment. One must possess the capacity to modify one’s story yet not feel the slightest pang of conscience. Some call this lying, but there’s a subtle difference.
Before moving to France, I was a vegetarian. I didn’t do it for reasons of conscience, just found the taste of meat no longer agreed with me. This was often taken as a challenge by non-vegetarians, as if I thought I was superior. I was once with some people in a diner off Governor Ritchie Highway having breakfast. The waitress came over and we ordered. I asked for hominy grits, whole wheat toast, orange juice and coffee. The food arrived. While we were eating, a woman seated with us asked why I hadn’t ordered eggs and bacon and I confessed to my vegetarian status. This shook her up. She said she was also a vegetarian. I noticed she was eating sausage, bacon, and eggs. Later, when we were alone, I asked her why, if she was a vegetarian, she was eating meat at breakfast? I could see her equilibrium was shaken, but she quickly recovered. Then she started speaking to me like I was a child, barking a few incomprehensible words at me. This satisfied her conscience, the matter was settled.
Sometimes this happens within the course of the same conversation as the person slowly reads what they feel are the expectations of those around them. For example, changing one’s political views in the blink of an eye. This recalls something I read once about Charles Manson. He said that in prison he’d learned never to argue with anyone but always mirror what they said back to them. This lowered the possibility of a violent response. I found what he said interesting yet the fact that this wisdom came from a psychopathic murderer made me wonder if it was the most useful life advice.
Recently I’m reading the Venetian adventurer and lover Giacomo Casanova’s autobiography Ma Vie (My Life). The book was written at the end of his life when he was staying at the castle Dux of Count Wallenstein in Bohemia. He was bored, his life of seduction and adventure now behind him, so he took a 3000-page walk down memory lane. I can’t think of any other book where the contrasts of what constitutes a man are so blatantly exposed. He readjusted his thinking to whatever situation he finds himself in. He’s the hero of his own life.
Nothing for Casanova is fixed, all is fluid, variable. Maybe that’s why the book has such a positive tone despite his many brushes with danger, prison and death. In the preface, he declares that he’s religious and believes in a transcendental god and then with the next breath compares his lovers to the food he likes (that with strong flavor and a pleasing odor) and then describes the type of lover he prefers (those who sweat copiously). He says it behooves any man to take advantage of a fool for his own profit. Though at odds with his proclaimed religious dogma, he clearly finds no dissonance in his perspective.
Casanova’s variable approach to reality is well summed up in a quote from his book, “I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms.” I’m hoping one day to fully integrate this type of reasoning into my own life because I’m sure that, once accomplished, I’ll be much happier.