+ Like so many, my husband and I went to see the movie, You Can See Everything this past weekend. Our kids liked it better than we did (it’s three hours long, which for middle-aged people who frequent the bathroom, is just too long), but the film certainly raised some interesting questions. I couldn’t help going down some rabbit holes about the movie, about Theranos, about Elizabeth Holmes, and about what makes any of us susceptible to deception and fraud. The movie makes you question whether Elizabeth Holmes is deliberately manipulative and deceptive, or whether she is living in her own made-up reality, and has deceived herself as much as anyone else.
One podcast I listened to about the movie, was a panel of mental health professionals. They were debating about what circumstances which would have helped to “create” an Elizabeth Holmes (the usual nature versus nurture debate), but the more interesting part of the conversation to me, was about why any of us are easily deceived. (Theranos bilked “smart” investors out of billions of dollars, even when there was no obvious proof that its blood-testing machines had any efficacy at all). Who, in their lives, has never been a victim of some level of fraud or deception? Most of the experts seem to come to the conclusion that the reason why even the “wisest” among us, can get duped, is that we humans are very attached to our own stories and narratives. We want to believe what we believe, and we don’t want to have to make any changes to the narratives which we have created. Facing reality could force us to have to make hard decisions in our lives, which we aren’t prepared to make. Facing reality can make us face hard truths about our own selves, and a lot of the times, are fragile egos just can’t handle this. The stories we tell ourselves serve us well. They make us feel safe and in control. Sometimes the lies that we tell ourselves are so entrenched, that on a conscious level, we truly believe the lies told to us, or the lies we’ve told ourselves, even when the irrefutable facts sit right in front of our faces. So, in this sense, are we all simultaneously living out own little realities (as marketers know – Perception is Reality)? We all could be experiencing the exact same circumstances in the physical world, and yet our perceptions of these experiences is what actually makes each of our own realities true to us. Maybe we are all living in our own little worlds?
The mark of a good film is that it makes you think long after you’ve seen it. In that sense, You Can See Everything is a good film. At least that is my reality for now (truthfully, right after I saw it, I didn’t honestly think it was that good of a movie). A good reminder to protect ourselves from all sorts of deception, is knowing that we can always change our minds.
+ I’ve used the catch phrase on my blog for many years now -” Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.” The other day I saw it worded a different way that made its meaning even more clear to me:
“Your trauma isn’t your fault, but it is your responsibility.” In other words, how the pain in your life (and we all have pain) arrived at your doorstep, often isn’t your own fault, but how you choose to alchemize, heal, react to and repair your pain, is your onus. We can all leave the world a little bit better, if we work to heal our own individual pain.