"Good and evil do not befall men without reason. Heaven sends them happiness or misery according to their conduct". Confucius.
Most of us want so very badly to believe that this quote is true, that there is a divine order to the Universe. But truth be told, we have all met people, dated them, seen them on the news, had them cut us off in traffic, that have made us question: do bad people really get what they deserve?
As I'm sure most everyone has heard by now and is probably sick of hearing, the saga of author James Frey's book , A Million Little Pieces now comes to its end, and hopefully, so does his writing career. Yesterday (1/26/06) on her show, Oprah properly (and oh so much more restrained than I would have been) dressed down a very regretful-looking Frey and FINALLY got him (at the end of the show) to say the words we had been waiting all this time to hear him say: "I lied". He pranced and danced around for over 45 min. using every other word or phrase comparable until Oprah finally backed him in a corner and basically told him there were no other words for what he had done.
Now lying to most people may not seem like the most heinous crime out there, and I'm certainly not comparing it to murder, rape, or child molestation by any means, but it is my opinion that the very degradation of one's character and soul begins with lying and then it's all downhill from there. But let's face it; we all do it at some time or another. We call in sick to work when we're not really sick, we tell Aunt Bertha every year at Christmas that her special recipe fruitcake was delicious when even the dog wouldn't eat it, and we swear to the officer that pulls us over that we honestly didn't know our tags were expired. Well, OK, maybe that's just me, but you know who you are out there and I know you're doing it too, don't lie. Or do, which would just prove my point quicker.
My point is, most of us lie to AVOID hurting people's feelings. We don't write a fictional "memoir", get Oprah to endorse it for her Book Club, jump to the top of the bestseller list after millions of people buy it and read it, make millions of dollars, buy a 1.2 million dollar apartment in NYC, and settle into our self-made life that we've built on a mountain of lies and hope we never get caught. A Million Little Pieces, indeed. And what's notable here is not what an idiot HE is, but what an idiot those of us who read the book and heartily endorsed it feel like now, knowing we were duped by a complete stranger that most of us have never even laid eyes on. I was surprised by my reaction last night, watching Oprah's show. I was all set to be indignant, saying, "Uh huh, you go Oprah-girlfriend, sic him", but instead I felt like my boyfriend had dumped me, betrayed me, lied right to my face. I was amazed that someone I had never even met could make me feel this way.
Reading the book (and this was the 1st substantial book besides a comic book that I have read in over 10 years, mind you), you became almost obsessed with his story, marveling over how one person could have survived all that he describes, championing him for all the good he was doing in helping other addicts by telling his story. You laugh, you cry, you get pissed, but most of all you get behind him and totally believe in him and even love him.
I don't pretend to ever know what makes people do what they do, but they tell us that it all starts in our childhood somehow. So James, I'm sorry that you just must not have gotten enough attention or love when you were younger. For that, we can blame your parents for their lack. And for what you did to all of us, thankfully we'll forget about it very easily and you'll just become the newspaper on the bottom of my bird cage, yesterday's news, a blip on the radar screen of our lives. For you, however, well your work is just beginning.
Until yesterday, a part of me really did believe that bad people get off easy and never really get what they deserve. Then I witnessed Instant Karma on the Oprah Show.
