Embellished Truth

After all the news about how Hillary Clinton's story about her trip to Bosnia when she was First Lady, I got to thinking. You know, everyone embellishes the truth from time to time. Some of us, like me, do it to make a story more interesting. Perhaps Mrs. Clinton did that too, and the more she told the story, the more it sounded like the truth. That sort of thing happens more often than any of us would like to admit. Sometimes embellishing doesn't matter, but sometimes it does. I was visiting the website and blog of a notorious story embellisher whom I know personally, and the information given on those sites paint a far different picture than who that person truly is. There are two scary things about this: 1. People believe this person is the person they hear speaking at seminars and believe what this person says and writes. 2. This person has built a business around the embellished person on the website. It seems deceitful to me, because there is some real potential to hurt people by doing this. Maybe that is why it is upsetting when someone who wants to become the leader of the free world embellishes a story. A lot of damage could be done. As far as I am concerned, I could say that I am a published poet and illustrator, and a manager of a small family business. I could say that I have been a public speaker, and costume designer too. All of these things are not lies, but they aren't exactly the truth either: "true lies," if you will. I have had one of my poems published in some obsure book. In the second grade, one of my crayon drawings of how I would clean up pollution was published in a social studies textbook that is now out of print. I manage my household of six; a "family business" you could say. In college I was the chaplain for my sorority and had to do invocations in front of gatherings of other chapters of my sorority, and I also had to do a eulogy at my best friend's memorial service--public speaking!. As for the costume designer, that also is true. Every year for the past 15 years I have designed or altered a pattern for homemade Halloween costumes for my children. So, as you can see, what is said and written my not be a lie, but it may not be the truth either. We must be careful with what we claim to be the truth, whether we are running or President, or just trying to build a business.