It was a tough day today. I had to let my sales manager go. He slipped out early…I think to go to his next gig, so I had to call him back into the office. I had never had to fire anyone before so I wasn’t really sure how to do it. Although I have been fired so many times you’d think I’d be an expert, but this was just the first time on the other side of the desk. I confronted the sales manager on his second position. He denied. Just like he denied something the previous day which I showed him irrefutable proof.
That just got me to think. When you catch someone in a lie, even with proof, why don’t they ever say…”That’s right, you got me…I lied.” Does anyone ever fess up to that? I’ve lied in my day, but when I’m caught I confess. Yet some people go to the grave in their denials. I guess if you tell yourself something for too long, even you start believing it. Its amazing how the mind can play tricks on you. Someone can take a 10% truth and fill in the other 90% with the lie, and then ultimately start believing the 90% to be the truth. I think it has something to do with that verse in Proverbs “A man’s ways is justified in his own mind but God weighs the heart.” We all can justify our actions. Even our lies, but if the lies go on unchecked, I think we run the danger of even deceiving ourselves not being able to differentiate between fiction and reality. A friend said it best once, “You run the risk of believing your own press.” Once you start going down that road of deceiving yourself, its hard to turn back, especially if people along side of you believe your lies to be true. Eventually you become self-unaware. This is an advantage I have with my talk with God everyday. I look in the mirror. This forces me to self-actualize or to be self-aware. If Im not honest with myself, its almost impossible to look myself in the eye in the mirror. Does anyone else have this problem? Last month I sinned in my walk. I won’t get into what I did. But I noticed I ventured far from the mirror. I didn’t want to face myself. Once I made myself right with God, I could look in the mirror again. I wasn’t ashamed of myself any longer. Its such an amazing metaphor, the mirror. When there is evil inside of me (in the form of sin) I don’t want to face myself. I can either, make myself right with God, or deceive myself. So I always want to choose to make myself right. That got me thinking about Dracula or vampires. They are thought to be the personification of evil. Isn’t it interesting according to the fable/story that they can’t see their own reflection in the mirror? Why because evil can’t look upon itself or chooses not to see itself? OK…just interesting things to ponder. I hope I didn’t make the sales manager out to be the personification of evil…that certainly wasn’t my intent. I really like the guy. The reason why this day was so hard is that I hated to see him leave. I wish there could have been some other way around this.
A little later, I conducted my second video interview in Arabic. This time was a little tougher as he didn’t speak hardly any English. So that was a further challenge. I wanted to shoot B-roll footage of him working his shop. He makes custom doors. I wanted him to walk around and observe his employees. He had about 50 Indians working for him in his shop. But I must have mis-communicated. He stood side by side with his employees, sanding doors, cutting wood with the table saw, getting sawdust all over his nice 3-piece suit. He was so accommodating and trying to give me what I wanted. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I just wanted him observing. I did get some pretty good material out of it however. It was great leading by example stuff.
I finished out my day with a dinner with my new friend Stan. Stan is a little older than I. I met him at church. He’s new to Bahrain so I figured he’d want to have dinner with a new friend. He’s got three kids in college and his wife will be joining him over here in two weeks. It’s a really interesting way to avoid the empty nest. He had lived in Oman for four years prior to Bahrain. It was just really nice to connect with a fellow Christian from California. Being with other like-minded believers sure does strengthen your faith.
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