Benjamin Franklin said, “three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” That phrase rings true in life, or at least it did, before social media. No secret is safe, and that’s not all that bad.
The world has had a plethora of examples where people have made mistakes in their past and troll-diggers have found it on the internet and shared it to their profit. In most cases, I argue that these were honest mistakes made by stupid kids. They don’t need to be punished again for being a stupid kid. Puberty was bad enough for everyone.
There have been some cases where real corruption was exposed. In the good ole days, if someone’s secret was exposed they could go to a different town and repeat their offense. Not any more. If your life is corrupt, it will come out and everyone will know about it.
I can feel all the sphincters clench at that. I understand. I don’t want all of my dirty laundry aired out for the whole world either. What is the solution?
Life a consistent life.
Notice that I didn’t say “perfect” life? Perfect is not possible this side of Heaven. Consistent is attainable.
Living a consistent life just means matching your actions to your words. If you claim to be a Christian, then you cannot be secret sex predator. Those are inconsistent. If you say you are trying to loose weight, then you can’t sit pounding Snickers bars. Those aren’t consistent.
If your life matches your words you will be free of the fear of scandal. People may take issue with you, but that’s ok. We aren’t here to make everyone like us. That is where we get into trouble. We hide our actions so as to not loose the opinion of someone else. When we hide our inconsistencies, then we set ourselves up for a big reveal on social media.
If we life a consistent life, then we have nothing to fear because we have nothing to hide.
Working for my life’s vision of writing stories in a beverage shop that I own.