What the hell does Donald Shimoda know?

This evening as I was folding laundry, I was thinking about the risks that all of us in the infidelity racket run (and especially in little niches like infidelity blogging) ... meaning mostly the risk of discovery, of the wrong people finding out what we have been doing or saying. And all of a sudden, totally unbidden, a quote popped into my head, expressing what must be the most useless possible advice for this sort of situation. It's lifted out of Richard Bach's Illusions, which some of you may remember as a font of 1970's-style "spiritual wisdom," ... or what passed for wisdom back then. (God, but youth is a wonderful thing!) And it runs:

Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world -- even if what is said is not true.

The first clause, of course, sounds like sturdy, old-fashioned Victorian moralizing: you know, ... never ever say or do anything that could look even the slightest bit wrong. The second clause blows that meaning to Hell. Taken as a whole, all that epigram can possibly mean, then, is "Don't give a good goddamn what anybody says about you: no matter who, no matter what." And that advice, too, has a respectably hoary antiquity about it, although it is hardly Victorian. "Classical" comes closer. I'm sure Diogenes would have approved.

Of course, Diogenes was homeless, lived in the streets, and saw no reason not to masturbate in public. It may not be the easiest way to live.

It may not be the easiest advice to hear.

It might also be wrong. Or at any rate, your mileage may vary. Now why did that even pop into my head? It's not like I have thought about Richard Bach in ... decades ...?

Very strange.