5/15/15, “A Servant of Truth”
Aboard B6 65, En route JFK-ABQ
No, not Chicago, but not Sweden yet, either. Where am I heading? As the dateline teases, I am heading back to
New Mexico. Why? To take care of some unfinished
business. More on that later. It has been over a month since I have last
written in this Travelogue. Due to some
issues with work, I have had to cancel my past two trips, and this is the first
time in over I month I have left New York.
Alright, so what has happened in that past month? I have been teasing out this bit of
philosophy in my Facebook and Instagram posts all day, but I haven’t really
explained what I mean by “a servant of truth.”
I consider the truth to be an absolute, unassailable form of good. The truth doesn’t have versions. Something either is, or it is not. There is no excluded middle. In that regard, I consider myself a servant
of truth.
That is not to say that I’ve
never lied, though I think I might be cleaner than Pinocchio for the month
since I last wrote here, possibly not even telling a single “white lie” or
exaggeration. Why? Because every time I utter a sentence that
has so much as a word of falsehood, it hurts. There’s no question of
being afraid of getting “caught in a lie,” no, the reason is quite
simpler. I am a servant of truth. Once you accept that there is only one truth,
only one reality, you realize that, when you lie, you sacrifice your sense of
reality. (Note: I am not attacking
anyone who believes in other versions of reality, in multiple universes, in
higher powers, etc. I am merely
explaining the logical conclusion of my views on truth and reality.) As Rand would argue, when you lie to someone,
you sacrifice your sense of reality in order to “pull one over” on your victim,
and you become their slave in that moment.
I am probably plagiarizing here, but this is a Travelogue entry, not a
philosophy paper. Taking it one step
further, when you lie to the world, when you pretend to be someone you’re not,
you become a slave to the world.
What is
the alternative to this form of slavery, to constant people-pleasing? It’s quite simple. It’s to become a servant of truth. Even white lies are not exempt from this
philosophy. There is a flipside to this
equation, to be being a servant of truth.
It is not enough just to not lie.
To be a servant of truth, you must also tell them the truth. If I think someone is pretty, I will tell
her. I do not tell her out of flattery
or an attempt to “woo” her. No, I tell
her because I am a servant of truth, and something like that serves truth. That does not mean I’ll spend an hour on the
street corner telling every woman that passes by if she is pretty or not. It simply means two things. First, it means that I will never tell
someone she is pretty if I do not think she is.
(This could be applied to some many other things, such as intelligence,
love, etc., but I think beauty serves as the best illustration of my
points). I will never tell someone she
is ugly. I wouldn’t even tell her she is
unattractive. Hypothetically, if someone
pressed me for an answer, I would eventually respond with, “You’re just not my
type.” Even something as mild as “I
don’t think you’re attractive” would be too harsh a statement that I would tell
anyone.
Why? If I’m claiming to be a servant of truth,
should I not be brutally honest with everyone?
Of course not. First of all, I do
not have a single mean bone in my body.
I am physically incapable of initiating violence against anyone, just as
I am emotionally incapable of being cruel to someone who has done me no
wrong. I am thick-skinned, and I can
take a joke, but tease me, hurt me, or insult me in malice, and I will not
hesitate to let loose, to viciously tear apart my attacker, physically if I was
harmed physically, emotionally if I was harmed emotionally (in malice). You can be a servant of truth without being a
servant of the hard truth, let’s call it.
It also
means that it hurts to lie, but it also hurts to withhold the truth. I will expand on this theory with specific
examples in my personal journal, but I think my point should be clear
here. I’m about to write a few sentences
here that will seem to apply to romantic feelings, but that is not how I intend
it. I am talking about friendships and
platonic relationships. If you think
someone is pretty, tell her. If you love
someone, tell her. Be a servant of
truth.
What’s
the point in building a friendship or a relationship on lies? Yes, I know the lies guys tell to get women
into bed, and maybe there is merit to taking that approach to life, but it’s
never been me. No, instead, I’m a
servant of truth. Why? One simple reason. Imagine, reader, I met someone, and, on our
first date, I told her some “white lie,” something to make myself sound more
interesting. Imagine, then, she wanted
to go out on a second date in no small part because of that lie I told. One thing leads to another, and we develop a
relationship, a relationship that was built on a lie (or lies, more likely by
that point). I can’t remember the last
time I have told a lie to someone I was trying to date. It is beyond the scope of this Travelogue to
go into any further details of my dating life.
Even if I don’t want to see someone again, I take great pains not to lie
to her.
I think I have made my point crystal clear about what it means to be a
servant of truth, and I have defended sufficiently the merits of it, assuming
you believe in absolute truth, in only one sense of reality. There is nothing more to say about this. Instead, I will continue on about the title
of this trip. Unfinished business. When I travel, I plan my trips with
precision. I plan them perfectly, so as
to avoid leaving what I dread most: unfinished business. Sometimes I fuck up and have to return. It’s why I went to Mexico two months ago, and
it’s why I’m going to New Mexico right now.
This summer I will be going to Yellowstone and Glacier NP with my
mother. I want her to be there when I
say the words that will bring a tear to my eye, the words we have been working
on saying even since before I defined the term: “Mainland US Complete.”
In order for that to happen, I needed to
visit every WHS in the Lower 48 states.
Three of them were in New Mexico, and I had been planning that trip for
a decade. I finally went on my “long
expected journey” three months ago, but I was thwarted. Taos Pueblo was closed for a festival. Fuck!!!
Instead of cancelling the trip, I reworked everything. I had planned to do one trip to New Mexico in
2015 to hit the WHS one trip to Texas in 2017 to hit the NPs. Well, I rearranged things a bit. I did one WHS and the Texas NPs on the
February trip, and I hastily booked this trip to do the other two WHS in New
Mexico. It actually worked out kind of
neatly, especially because of the present company.
About that.
One of my new friends, Connor, lives in New Mexico, and he is here for
school. The timing actually worked out
perfectly for me to fly out to New Mexico with him when he went back, and he
would join me on this trip. It saved
money for him, and it saved me the first night’s hotel and the car rental,
since we were able to stay with his mom the first night and use her car. It’s funny, these two WHS, the Indian ruins
in northern New Mexico have long been my white whale, and it is fitting that
they will be the last ones I hit before my summer trip with my mother.
We were supposed to go one February (or was
it April?) a decade ago as a family trip, but we cancelled it because, I think,
Taos Pueblo was closed, which I should have remembered when I planned the trip
for February 2015. Then came my grand
October 2013 trip, 10 days in the southwest, hitting every NPS in Texas, New
Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma. It was
going to be epic. What happened? The government shut down, closing all the
national parks. Ironically, Taos Pueblo
would still have been opened, but it was kind of pointless just to go for that
one site. February 2015, Taos Pueblo is
closed, but I still go to Carlsbad Caverns and the Texas NPs, leaving the
unfinished business, Chaco Culture NHP and Taos Pueblo for this weekend. Along the way, racing between Stamps and
Plaques, I’m sure we’ll have some fun.
It’s going to be a great trip. I
can tell.
Alright, so Day 0. I woke up early, slightly hungover from my
adventure last night, I had to wake up early to get ready and
because I needed to be at the office an hour early, since I was leaving an hour
early. The morning was blur. Before I knew it, it was 10 AM. I got plenty of work done, by zombie-like
state actually increasing my productivity.
Around noon, one of my coworkers, Uncle Frankie I call him, and I went
to lunch at Hop Won for my traditional pre-departure lunch.
I was short on time, and I wound up getting
to class a little late, sitting down next to the cute girl I’ve had a crush on
all semester. After class, we chatted a
bit and made plans to get together after the semester was over. I walked out, happy both about how that went
and that the semester was over. Well, I
still have to revise my final paper, but I could probably do that in the car
this weekend. I lit up a Cohiba Siglo
II, the cigar I smoked the first class of the semester, the same cigar that has
practically become tied to my philosophy classes at Hunter.
I headed back downtown, saying hi to my
friends at the cigar store, and finishing the cigar as I walked back to the
office. I finished what needed to be
finished at work and then headed back to the cigar store, where the car would
pick us up and where Connor was waiting.
The car was late, and the driver was awful. He was in the wrong spot, and I had to run him
down. We passed Fifth Avenue, and he
didn’t stop. What the fuck? Seriously, what the fuck?!? He said that Google Maps told him it would be
quicker to go across 42nd Street to Broadway, through Times Square,
down Broadway, and back across town to the tunnel, all in rush hour traffic on
a Friday. Bullshit! Bull-fucking-shit! I told him to make an illegal U-turn. After some protesting, he did. If he didn’t we very well may have missed our
flight. I was panicking the whole time,
fearing the repeat of the near miss from last time.
We got to the airport with an hour to spare,
but the line at security was much shorter and much quicker than last time. We got through security, but not without me
getting a very, shall we say, intimate pat down from the male security
officer. I got some more Chinese food,
the fourth time I’ve had Chinese food in three days, but they cooked it fresh,
and there was a line at checkout, so I had to wait until I got on the plane to
eat it. Connor and I had chosen the
window and aisle seats, hoping no would take the middle seat.
We figured wrong and found ourselves sitting
on the opposite sides of a cute Aussie girl.
Connor made fast friends with her, and she posed for all the photos we
took, so it looked like the three of us were travelling together. Soon enough, we took off, and I went to get
my laptop. It was then that I saw an
entire row of three seats empty, which I immediately claimed for myself. I then proceeded to write this entry, which I
will now close so that I can take a quick nap before we land. I would like to publish, but I don’t think
the Wi-Fi is working. If I wait until we
get to Albuquerque, it’ll be well past 2 AM New York by the time I publish it.
Albuqurque, New Mexico
Well, once more I find myself writing from Albuqurque, this time under
much different circumstances. My life
has turned itself around in the past three months, and I am much happier than I
was when I left Albuqurque the first morning of the previous trip. Like most of my life, the past three months
has been a blur, but enough about that.
In the past few hours, I have realized that, like me, Connor is a
servant of truth. While, like me, he can
be a jokester, a prankster, but he is always quick with a “just kidding” when
he is being less than truthful.
After we
landed, we were soon greeted by his parents, who were both delightful. We stopped at Wendy’s on the way back, and,
though I offered to pay for my share, his parents gladly paid for both of
us. We were soon at their place, and his
parents showed me the same hospitality that my parents would show (and have shown)
my friends. I played with the puppies
and ate my dinner, after which, I went outside, where I lit up an Ardor and
proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can publish
(and heavily edit).
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