The Invention of Truth
All this time I thought I was a heroic boy, taking on the universe in my fanciest Underoos. But no.
On a dreary day back in 1987, I committed to a philosophy I didn't even know existed. I could scarcely pronounce the word philosophy let alone subscribe to one, but there I stood in the upstairs hallway staring through the darkness at my parent's bedroom door, making a decision that impacts me every day. I was 8.
We make thousands of decisions every day. What should I have for breakfast? Should I go to the gym today? Do I covertly fart during the sermon or wait until we all get up to sing the next hymn? Some coin flips are riskier than others. But rare is the choice we make that stands out among others as life-changing. Rarer still is one we're able to identify as such. This is because the most reliable way to change your life is to make tiny alterations to your habits and trust the law of compound interest1 to grind away in the background. I suppose the other extreme is hitting rock bottom, which frames the change as a matter of sheer survival. I guess this is what happened to me.
For a modicum of perspective, let me not paint my childhood self as some sort of misfit who, at the end of my fifth bender in four weeks, had no choice but to turn my life around. Let it instead be stated that rock bottom for this eight-year-old wasn't very deep. It was like the rock bottom of an inflatable kiddie pool. But at that age, if you're incredibly lucky like I was, you don't know what real hardship looks like so it's all relative.
The memory of that day exists in my mind as a freeze-frame of a short film. The setting is a dark hallway leading to a door whose closure symbolized the end of a contentious conversation. The contents of the conversation were lost to time, but the outcome was not. I got caught lying. Like a stereotypical kid, I lied (and got caught) constantly, but there was something about the disappointment on my mother's face as she closed her door that sparked a realization. This wasn't working. I felt shitty when I got caught. I felt shitty when I got away with it. I hated the dread I felt between the time I lied and the time I was found out. And this final one, this "rock-bottom" lie, was moronic in its needlessness. It was a lie of convenience probably about something innocuous like whether or not I brushed my teeth. At that moment, the stabbing truth crystallized out of all those lies: I was a coward.
This was not good news. All this time I thought I was a heroic boy, taking on the universe in my fanciest Underoos. But no. I found an unsettling blight on my resume, and it had to go. So I took a moment, said goodbye to that part of myself, and set it ablaze like dead wood. I also made a hard left into the upstairs bathroom and brushed my damn teeth.
One hundred percent of the time. That, I decided, was how often I would answer with the truth when someone asked me a question. That sounds like a lot. Why not start small and only cut out the white lies, you know? See how it fits. Unexpectedly, however, instead of feeling daunted by the finality of "100%", a sense of relief swept over me. 23 years later, I stumbled across a piece in the Harvard Business Review by Clayton Christensen and finally understood why:
We killed ourselves all season, and our hard work paid off—we made it all the way to the finals of the big tournament. But then I learned that the championship game was scheduled to be played on a Sunday. This was a problem. At age sixteen, I had made a personal commitment to God that I would never play ball on Sunday because it is our Sabbath...Every one of the guys on the team came to me and said, "You've got to play. Can't you break the rule, just this one time?"...It was a difficult decision to make. The team would suffer without me. The guys on the team were my best friends. We'd been dreaming about this all year [but] I needed to keep my commitment. So I told the coach that I wasn't able to play in the championship game. In so many ways, that was a small decision...But looking back on it, I realize that resisting the temptation of "in this one extenuating circumstance, just this once, it's okay" has proved to be one of the most important decisions of my life. Why? Because life is just one unending stream of extenuating circumstances (emphasis added). Had I crossed the line that one time, I would have done it over and over and over in the years that followed. It's easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time...if you have justified doing it once, there's nothing to stop you doing it again (emphasis added).
At the time, this all seemed a simple matter of practicality. One less thing to remember. But what I'd done, however unwittingly, is set a powerful precedent that allowed me the agency to change my perspective, choose a different path, and have that become the new normal. The secret sauce lies in the full commitment to it. When I said to myself, "I will never lie to my mother again", I only had to make one decision. If, however, I said "I will try to be more honest", I would have to make a moral judgment and a new decision every time she asked me a question. And do you know how many questions moms ask? All of them, that's how many. Naturally, being so young I didn't have a clue about any of this so I prepared myself for a long mental battle with my conscience. Early on, I told the truth with a wince, waiting for life to show me I was being naive and deceit would keep my options open. But something else showed up instead. I felt proud of myself. I felt relieved. I felt...brave. Obviously, I still made mistakes and had to answer for them, but at least when I did I could simply explain what actually happened.
Since then, I've leaned heavily on my memory of that moment. Life is a constant barrage of curveballs and it's always tempting to adopt the perspective that things are "happening to me". Ironically, there's a sense of safety in false victimhood, where one can direct blame for their miserable situation outward. But while hoisting accountability up on my shoulders is burdensome and often painful, it's the only reliable way to move the needle and avoid leaving things completely to chance. I feel grateful that I discovered this option when I was young and the stakes were low. It's helped me acknowledge when I'm hitting a kiddie pool-sized rock bottom so I can look for ways to alter my behavior before things get too deep and irreparable. And the best part is you only have to do it once before it's a part of your self-improvement arsenal. "There's nothing to stop you doing it again."
In (very) layman's terms, compound interest allows exponential growth of wealth over long periods by investing modest amounts consistently.
Consistency and time are the critical pieces. Google it and poke around for a more by-the-book description.