this i bereave
September 29, 2008 9:12 PMA little assignment I did for English based off the NPR segment "This I Believe." I hope you find it somewhat amusing for a first draft.
Eugene Yang
9/29/08
This I Bereave
Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” To lie is to carry a burden on the conscience. Suddenly, you’re being held accountable to words that do not define you, and will eventually lead to some pretty sticky situations. Lying is a lose-lose situation in this world; you get short-term losses as well as long-term ones. Well, hell, why would anybody want to lie at all then, if you put it that way? Lying is a defense mechanism, a tool of procrastination. You always go home every night saying to yourself “I’m going to start with math, then do my biology, then finish my English, etc.” Suddenly, you look at the clock, and you lie. You lie to yourself that you have enough time to goof off, knowing damn sure well that last night you stayed up past three AM. While you’re procrastinating, you’re still lying to yourself that you’ll have enough time to cram it all before you pass out. In this case, you’re lying to prevent the dreadful, terrible truth: two and a half hours of homework await you. You lie to yourself because you are simply not strong enough to accept the fact that your homework could be done much more efficiently if it meant a night devoid of any entertainment, social contact, or otherwise.
Now let me tell you another story, about a terrible, terrible lie. Of course, I’m talking about Santa Claus. You see, lying is great while it lasts, but when all is said and done, you’re left with only one option with which to view the world: it sucks. Now this was about when I was 6 years old, when I had to miss Christmas Day to go on vacation to Tahoe. I was severely disappointed that Santa would not be visiting my household, and made clear note of this to my mom. Then, on the day we get home, my mom let’s me go in first to disarm the alarm. She usually never does this, because we’ve had, say, a few testing runs on our alarm system previously that year it was installed. She lets slip a subtle command to go open up the curtains, and sure enough, a gift-wrapped box awaited me there on the windowsill. My first instinct, “Bullshit, nothing gets through that alarm.” My eyebrows went through the roof, and that night I confronted my 10 year old brother, “Santa doesn’t exist, huh?” He turned to me slowly with a broad grin, “Nope.” Now you often hear of the incredibly traumatic experiences, where the kids throw tantrums for twenty-seven nights. You know why this happens? Because they lie to themselves, lying that their parents aren’t lying to them, because Santa Claus sure as hell doesn’t exist, because no fat red man will ever break through my house’s alarm system. So I believe in the pursuit of knowledge, that we may be bereft of this burden of lies that plagues our minds.