It's the battle against nothingness, against silence that concerns me most tonight, and every night, actually. This is my eternal struggle, the one I never seem to conquer.
This is the weekend when Americans en masse celebrate acting. Tomorrow night will be the Oscars. My kids and I will be watching, as we always do. We'll make a bit of a party around it, although this year, I do not believe I have seen any of the nominated films, and I'm not sure they have either.
Maybe this was just a bad year, or maybe what Hollywood chose to do had nothing to do with us? If so, it wouldn't be the first time, although, I confess, in recent years I thought the film industry was coming a bit closer to the world I know, and my kids know.
Of course, acting is arguably the weirdest profession of them all: Pretending to be someone you're not.
I do not mean to criticize actors. The ones I have known, including several fairly famous ones, have struck me as every bit as authentic human beings as anyone else who has come or gone from my life.
But pretense exacts a price. You can only pretend to be someone other than your essential self so many times, in so many situations, before your actual identity will collapse, and you will too.
This is my observation as an investigative reporter, a hunter, essentially. And also my conclusion as a human being.
It all comes back to silence. If you cannot tell the truth to those around you about the choices you've made, as painful as that truth may be, you will die a fake, a liar, a manipulator of another's emotions.
It's far better to tell the truth. The whole truth.
But, hey, I'm only a journalist.
-30-
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