They say that you can only judge the true character of a man by seeing how he acts when no one is looking. Well that is just pure ridiculousness because by telling me that I have trained myself to always act like someone is watching. That is, unless, the family is gone and the blinds are drawn. Then I am free to shed my pants and roam the halls in my underwear, sipping ginger ale from my goblet while listeneing to the soothing voice of Dennis Bartell introduce my favorite symphonies on classical KUSC. Oh the simple pleasures of life, often reduced to instances few and far between. The cause of such a lack of peaceful and glorious moments is vanity itself. We are told that we must always be on our toes, worrying what might be percieved by others as unacceptable. Alas, it is the fate of the human heart to be forever wrapped up in a tangle of judgement and servitude. Even the self endowed "individualists", with their crazy fashion trends, wacky hair styles, and "I don't care what people think of me because I'm quirky and weird and I march to the beat of a different drum" attitudes are prisoners of the vain wories we all face.
But what is the cure? How do we overcome this insane self bondage?
I don't know.
But Miriam Condor, author of "How to Stop Stress and make a Fantastic First Impression" does.
The book's entire message is that the best way to do it is to stop worrying so much about what people think about you, to just be yourself.
I basically wasted $18.99 on a book that taught me a lesson I could have learned by watching any american sitcom produced after 1980. The moral of this post is to not buy self help books. because then you're not helping yourelf, the book is helping you. Only you can help yourself, and prevent forest fires, which is a terrible ad-campaign by the way, because I'm pretty sure most of us don't spend our time in the woods looking for ways to not burn the forest down. The ones who do start the fires are too sick in the head to heed the advice of a talking bear anyway. But maybe that's part of the true character thing, which makes me a great person, because I don't start forest fires, even when no one is looking.
FIN
dear jacob,
ReplyDeletei am appalled by your audacity to insult in an american icon. one who has altruistically fought for our environment and achieved more than the combined forces of Capitan planet and other hippy-loving, nature-protecting coalitions. the one thing keeping our earth clean and suitable for living is awareness. Smokey Bear, who many demeaningly know as smokey the bear, has opened the eyes of millions who are oblivious to threat of smoke covered skies, ash covered lands, and diminished supplies of oxygen that are all caused by forest fires. if Grammys were rewarded to PSAs then Ad council and US forest service would be sharing one right now. If the nobel peace prize was given to fictional advertising characters then Smokey Bear would probably be sharing one with McGruff, the crime dog. Thank you Smokey Bear for for caring. Thanking you Smokey Bear for sharing. Thank you Smokey for believing. Thank you Smokey for achieving. Throughout american woodlands people are taking caution when playing with matches, when using their flint and steel strikers, and when around campfires. Here's to you smokey.