Record, Reputation & Revelation

” If I had two heads, one would have rolled away, outside the gate of Pier 5 on the day before the Fall of Saigon.” (my Sliding Doors/when it’s worst)

At times, on reflection, I wonder what would have become of me, of that other head – like our abandoned car – grafted onto someone else’s body. Would I be riding a motorcycle, taking my time with those Round-About to shop around for an affordable cup of coffee? Definitely I would be pondering “what-if” I could have left on the last chopper out.

We do have a capacity for imagination, for getting outside of ourselves, for empathy. In doing so, tone and tame down our self-delusion a notch.

Live one’s life so as to have no regrets, revision or recrimination.

Of course we fell short. Who doesn’t! (BTW, it’s the indisputable foundation and pre-supposition of a need for redemption ” all men are fallen short of God’s KPI”. )

People are rated, and run on their records, reputation and revised revelation.

We forget our past transgression in order to look at ourselves in the mirror, then “self-talk” or self-congratulate. In sales, they even taught you to convince yourself ” I like myself” X 1,000 to brace against rejection.

The first person I need to convince each day is myself: am I OK? can “we” go on now? what’s next! what is to be hoarded, salvaged, discarded and improved? Getting things done. Yelping yourself. The rating, the ranking, like your FICO scores, changes from day to day.

If you’re energetic, restless and with above-average self-exhibition, the long-term chart shows high peaks and low valleys. If you’re an introvert, and a contemplating type (who often take the less traveled off-ramp), your path would see fewer crises (risks and rewards well proportionated).

We live and die (socially) by our reputation (others’ perception) not our self-revelation, self-branding and reputational rehab. Similar to candidate’s exit polling.

The other day, I went over my endorsement page and noted that one of my colleagues, now deceased, said some nice things about me (should I keep it? delete it?) It touched me deeply. Online, you live forever, by your record, reputation enhanced feedbacks from people dead or alive.

It’s both scary and privileged. Since when could our entire population afford to live in a glass house! Every key-stroke, every utterance, every text is to be retrieved and shown as evidence of your attempt, aspiration or transgression (in the 60’s, they have to hire people to listen in the “Conversation”).

I have always loved lighthouses. It’s one of the best icons one can aspire to become. It is positioned on high ground, brightly lit and spins around 360 degrees. It warns seafarers and sojourners not to proceed too close to shore. Danger signal: Don’t live as I do … sort of legacy-campaign.

In the end, we are all like Columbus, throwing up sea waters, exploring and exploiting nearest environment for our own gain. Along the way, we hid from ourselves from evidence of yesterday’s shame: people who hurt us, people who we in turn hurt back out of self-preservation. Like a Thomas Wolfe’s line ” each of us is all the sums he has not counted..” Look homeward, Angel. (Do visit the village of Ba Tri near the Southern tip of Vietnam, where mass-skulls museum is still open to the public).

As human, we need to exercise healthy self-image – self-edited version of our little and short history; all the while, we preserve selective memory at the onset of dementia. It’s a dilemma and a drama trying to balance the yin and the yang. Our record, reputation and self-revelation are all there. People know us better than we do ourselves, but we pretend to put our best foot forward, presenting on-stage what’s presentable and acceptable. ” I like myself, I like myself”.

It’s like white-washing our personal history, our Holocaust and Hiroshima, Watergate and Lewinsky-gate, Y2K and J6, 9/11 and George Floyd. It’s all there on Alphabet (who is better known as Google) and other search engine.

Forget not who we were and still could be. Often times, on reflection, I wonder what would become of me, the other head that rolled of Pier 5. Would I still be riding an old scooter, wearing a helmet, and a poncho should it rains, circling those Colonial French Roundabouts, in search of God-knows-what just to finish out my “shift” and my days.

To completely “delete” someone, you would have to wipe clean his/her paper trail, digital record, dental record, EMR, court filing, tax filing, educational and social documents after disposing the decomposed body (I happen to see “the talented Mr Ripley” and earlier French version played by Alain Delon) and even then, the best detective in Lawrence Block tradition can still find out those bread crumbs to reassemble and assess what had actually transpired.

For the past 15 years, I have been toying with the Internet as an user. I just want to see where the distributed nodes take me. It’s been a wild ride without a single ticket (except to pay for Spectrum Internet). Endless and boundaryless. Fun and fearful. Educational and entertaining. To death.

Any ride would take you outside of your confine, lift you up high so you can see (and be seen, like lighthouses). In the end, with wishful thinking, I would love to retrieve that other head for proper burial, as I once read about that lost whale in the South China Sea. Like a Clint Eastwood line in Josey Wales, ” I guess we all died a little in that war”.

Then, I will be at peace, knowing my non-judgmental lost twin was found. I am OK, I am OK. I like my (other) self. I like myself! You will only know what I chose to reveal, the tip of the iceberg. The rest might be known to you, but unbeknown to me. Then, there is unknown unknown, but we won’t get into that.

Beware of those who throw stones, if you lived in a glass house ( anti-social media). All this btw was from a review of my professional endorsement, ironically, from a now deceased colleague. God rest her soul.