No protection

“Against such frankness, there is no protection.”

British spy novelist John le Carré writes incredibly intriguing and complex stories of personal duplicity and disillusionment. He’s one of my favorites.

The line above comes from his book Absolute Friends. Two spies with lives drenched in deception, are spinning their tales when one of them unexpectedly speaks the truth, completely unsettling the other guy: “Against such frankness, there is no protection.”

I was never a hippie. But I got as close as a Baptist preacher’s kid could in the middle and late 60s. I hate to say this – it looks so un-cool now in print, but “let it all hang out” was one of my most dearly held values. I really believed if we could get the entire world in a big circle and “say it all,” we’d be magically redeemed by the honesty. (Love is all you need.)

It didn’t take many years to find out:
- It doesn’t work that way.
- I don’t want to know that much about most people.
- And I wasn’t really honest back then, only needy. I was holding my life out on a tray, wanting someone to, as we used to say, affirm me. (That looks strange in print too.)

Stan Freberg, a wildly inventive comedian and recording artist back when there were records, worked in advertising for a while. One of his airline campaigns – maybe it was for Pacific Airlines – tried to calm nervous flyers with honesty. Since their fleet had the fewest accidents, he did some wonderfully wacky commercials with the tag line: You won’t crash. It was true, but it turned out most customers didn’t want to think about it.

Still, I’m with le Carré. Speaking truth can be powerfully, breathtakingly clarifying. I often find myself wanting to say to someone, “That’s a powerful statement, I'm convinced you believe it and it's very well said. Unfortunately, it’s not true.” It’s the frustrated hippie coming out.