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Today, I have a decision to make. Those who read this blog for idle entertainment, I'll try to make the decision interesting for you. Those of you who read this for inspiration or advice, you'll have to look somewhere else today, I suppose - again, I tell you that I am only making observations about my life - to those who've told me that they gained understanding about their lives because of something I said, I repeat that I am not responsible for the consequences of your subsequent actions.

When I feel out of sorts, bordering on boredom or situational depression, I seek irony or humor to cross out any attempt of mine to take life seriously. Today, I hold in front of me two collections of humor - "Totally Mad," the complete collection of MAD magazine from 1952 to 1998, and "The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker," all 70,363 cartoons from 1925 to 2006. I drink tea from a cup with a mock cover of a soap opera comic book titled, "Corporate THRILLS." Two men and a woman in the drawing. One guy has his hands on the woman's shoulders. The other guy says, "Take your hands off her pal! That's the woman I want for my... ...EXECUTIVE VICE-PRESIDENT!"

After the meeting with the startup team yesterday, I thought about a future, moments ahead of me that simultaneously include both the startup team and me. I thought about a future where I and students in an institute of learning share the same moments together. I wondered about the moments where my wife and I share the future together when I am sharing moments with the startup team or students. The phrase, "someone to pay the bills," popped into my thoughts.

Before I sat down to write this blog entry, I checked our home email. A cousin of mine informed us that she is moving out of the home she shared with her husband while they complete their divorce and at the same time, her daughter (my first cousin, once removed?) is marrying her childhood sweetheart in Texas, eventually moving her 12-year old daughter from east Tennessee to Texas with her (my cousin's daughter lost her husband to a previously undocumented disease).

Right now, I am debating whether I should take myself seriously. I never have before so why start now? I have looked at the world through a microscope, a telescope, an airplane and a hot air balloon. In all instances, I have not found a view that tells me there's a way off this home planet of ours. Yet, in my thoughts, I act as if I'm looking for a way out of here, that all of the human interactions that have shaped me are not really real, and that I haven't shaped others around me, either, because they had the choice not to be influenced by me.

A question has been looming in the back of my thoughts for years. Whenever it starts to surface, I push it aside or throw a mental blanket over it. Today, that thought hangs on a banner across the walls of my mind. No matter which path I walk in my personal synaptic labyrinth, this thought's trying to get my attention.

What is the thought? "What if I have been lying to myself most of my life?"

Today, I have a decision to make. I want to answer that old question of mine before I do anything else.

I had fallen asleep last night thinking that I was going to write my next blog entry about what keeps two humans devoted to each other physically and mentally their whole lives. I was going to examine the sexual temptations that have literally sat in my lap that I somehow found the reserve to walk away from to keep me from breaking down the barrier that keeps sexual diseases out of my marriage. I was going to research chemical attraction, pheromones and the like, to see if there's a subtle secret that successful married couples share in how they keep renewing their chemical attraction to one another. I was going to discuss the social training that goes into keeping two people together in the midst of complex societies, when it's no longer just a matter of survival for an adult couple to stay together to raise their kids in the wild jungle or dangerous woods (training that includes giving people the notion that there's a reality to the concept of "falling in love with a soul mate," as if we can't fall in lust with any human that walks into our personal space). I was going to finally observe that my wife took her mother's advice to heart and married a friend she happened to love and not a lover she hoped would turn into a friend. I was going to add that it helps if one of the marriage partners is one who's willing to pay the bills, no matter whether one or both of them earns the income. That way, you've solved the money, sex and companionship problems that often plague or doom marriages.

Instead, I'm examining the question, what if I have been lying to myself most of my life?

What does that mean, exactly? Well, the way I see it, I know what life is all about. I know the simple solution of success: "Have kids. Take care of your family." I know that humans are social animals who like to form hierarchies that eventually explode into bureaucracies that get rebuilt over the centuries because either they fall out of fashion (those dang barbarians just want to have the hordes of gold and stores of food for themselves, don't they?) or the local environment has been wiped clean of human sustainability.

But yet (or yeti, in this case, maybe even SETI), I want to believe that I have some other ultimate solution for success, at least for me. Not only do I want to believe, I KNOW IT. I have it right here in my head. I have kept it safe inside me so that others can't have it (thank goodness, we can't fully "read" people's thoughts - until then, my secret's safe with me). If I don't share it with you, then it dies with me and I'll be the one with the smile on my face, not you, knowing I've had the solution to my success with me my whole life but never had to use it because I could lean on the rest of human society to pay my bills.

Everybody wants a bargain. Everyone wants to have something that gives him/her the advantage to be a better person. We want what's best for our kids. We want to be the only one on the block who got the deal of the century that we bought or can sell. Our genes and chromosomes are programmed for survival of the fittest.

Or so I've been led to believe. But what if I have been lying to myself most of my life?

You know what I'm talking about. For instance, what's a bachelor's degree for? Is it to show you have a certain set of knowledge? Not really. Actually, a degree should show you have the ability to learn and adapt quickly to social expectations (assuming you got your degree in 3-5 years). Is a degree necessary for success? Not at all. [So why am I teaching students/customers that they should get a degree? I'm beginning to think maybe I shouldn't. I realize that I believe in freedom to think for yourself without having to pay for a conditioned brain but I'll get to that in a moment.]

How am I lying to myself? Is it because I think that life is a joke and that hell would be a situation where you're the only one in on the punchline? Wow! Now that's a thought worth pursuing. Pardon me while I raise an imaginary glass of whiskey in my pub for one and exclaim, "A round for everybody! The joke's on me!"

Where am I lying to myself? I sit in a room so packed with memorabilia that I don't even know what I have anymore. I glance around the room and see all the items that went with situations that influenced who I've become. I have never fully imagined a moment of my life without nearly instant access to these physical items. They are part of the extension of me. To someone else, every single one of these items is junk, especially out of context. Their value is situational. Therefore, by extension, my value is situational.

Why would I be lying to myself? Am I trying to protect myself from something? Is reality all that scary? Does another part of me know something that the rest of me doesn't? Am I looking at my body and seeing someone that others don't?

Am I lying to myself? That's the real question here. I only added the "what if" and "most of my life" parts to give the question dimension in order to fill up the whole space on the scrolling marquee in my mind (don't know who's going to pay the electric bill for that one).

The answer to all of these questions is no. These are only words. The truth remains*: "Have kids. Take care of your family." I have no kids, no direct genetic offspring to call my own. Others may want to say I'm part of their family, no matter whether I'm genetically related to them or I'm a potential customer of a product someone is peddling at a bargain price. I have probably contributed to someone's successful fulfillment of the mantra, "havekidstakecareofyourfamily," but not because I actively chose to be involved.

[*Ode to Led Zeppelin's "The Song Remains The Same" that I know by title only and never heard or seen - an example of influences that appear for no apparent reason]

So now I can empty myself of the doubt written into the question, "What if I have been lying to myself most of my life?"

I am still me. The greatest me that will ever be. I'm a winner in a game I've never played. I don't want to play other people's games and that's all right. Now I've got to figure out how to make my wife happy while I extricate myself from trying to raise somebody else's kids and help a startup company get the people it needs to be successful without my involvement. I know the fact that none of this really matters because I don't have any vested interest in how any of this finally turns out. I'm not going to be someone else anytime soon so some of it does matter - I like to laugh and see people smile. Oops! I just told you my secret. Oh well. As I said before, if I have a thought, then thousands, millions or billions of other humans have the same thought, too, so it never was a secret to begin with. That doesn't keep me from lying to myself that I'm the only one who knows. Damn! I just gave away my other secret. Okay, time to shut my mouth and go for a walk.

[For those who've asked about the subject of my next book, it's a satire about satires about the motivational book movement. It won't be available in stores or on sale at the table at the back of the conference room where I'll be speaking next week in Toledo, Lancashire, Albuquerque and Walla Walla. I could, like so many others, organize this blog into a book or simply let you read the book in semi-serious, quasi-serial form right here for free. The latter is much more interesting to me and gives me the freedom to walk and think, without being hounded by an agent for the final copy of the book or fans who want my autograph on a stack of dead trees. Talk to you soon. Gotta get out and enjoy the sunshine.]