Come to think of it, I have been slandered most of my life, one way or another. I guess it’s the price you pay for getting off your ass, sticking your neck out, and achieving something. Of course you sometimes stumble, that’s comes with the territory and sadly those moments will be the only ones your enemies cling to. It disappoints but makes you harder. At those times it will be difficult to see the humanity in others and to hold onto your belief that at the heart of all things lies a goodness. But in order to do your best work you must struggle to believe in those things even if you are bereft of evidence.
Why do people who know better, or should, gravitate to slander another? Envy? Ignorance? To elevate themselves at another’s expense? Or something far darker?
Wilheim Reich once wrote a book entitled “The Murder of Christ” – its conceit was that the murder of Christ keeps on being perpetrated. In a nutshell, all of us are born with a light force but most have it beaten out of us in childhood through dysfunctional parents or a school system that turns circles into squares. Those of us that retain that child-like light force, or positive openness to life, are doomed to ridicule, slander and the spiteful, destructive actions of others. The soul destroying realization is that most of these negative attacks are from those who profess to be friends.
According to Reich these people are mostly unaware of their actions or intentions. It is as if your mere existence irritates them. You see, light will always attract to itself the darkness that cannot rest until it has extinguished it.
The celebrated writer Arthur Miller, who was always reticent to discuss his ex-wife Marilyn Monroe, once said, “It’s strange, but that girl seemed to draw to herself the very people who would destroy her.”
I have had my integrity attacked by law breakers; my talent questioned by people who couldn’t spell their name; my vision ridiculed by hacks who couldn’t direct traffic (and then went on to publicly prove it), my sanity tested by the mentally impaired, my compassion thrown back in my face by those whose dictionary does not contain the word “empathy”, and judged by thieves in a world where only materialistic items and wealth are valued.
I once stood up over a principal – I refused to work with a man who broke the law. In order to be rid of him I had to burn the fort. And myself. I once told Warren Zevon that story and not long after he wrote a song called, “I Was In The House When The House Burned Down.” Yep. I have the scars to prove it.
And yes, the days do grow short when you reach September. My life has been simplified by circumstance and I’ve paid greatly for that principal. I guess I grew up watching too many Gary Cooper films where the hero risked it all but won in the final reel. But they were just movies. Wish fulfillment. Childish dreams of a more just world.
The truth is, in the end, it doesn’t matter. And sadly, neither does the truth. People are only interested in the abridged Readers Digest version that they can misquote at dinner parties in-between snorting lines of coke and boring everyone senseless with tales about how busy they are on their journey to death.
Your only reward in a Spartan life is to sleep the sleep of the just. And being able to look at your own reflection without flinching.(c) Frank Howson 2014
