Books are my constant companions pretty much since forever. I started reading when I was about 6 years old, and until now I’ve probably chewed out a few cubic meters of the stuff. I am, without a shadow of a doubt, a book addict. BRA¹, here I come.

Like any child of that age, I was really into adventures. It started with fairy tales - folk legends, the Greek mythology (the children’s edition, I’ve got to the heavy stuff quite a few years later), 1001 Arabian Nights, novelised history… Then I ran into Jules Verne, Karl May and Alexandre Dumas (all of them translated in my native Romanian, of course) and that sealed the deal. I was hooked.

As years went by, I kept on going through miles and miles of fine typography. “Shogun“, James Clavell’s masterpiece that dragged me kicking and screaming into adolescence. Frank Herbert’s “Dune”, with its unparalleled world and insightful characters. Tolkien. Asimov. Clarke. Orson Scott Card. Then Dostoievski, Gabriel Garcia Marques, Hugo and Sartre. Mircea Eliade and Eugen Ionescu. I was moving up in the world. Thomas Mann. Herman Hesse. John Fowles. Heavy, heavy books that I was struggling to understand, complex characters and motivations, refining years and years of the author’s experience and shaped by mature thoughts and desires. Like many before me, I’ve moved then to the arid world of philosophy. Plato. Descartes. Hegel. Kant.

And then there was Nietzsche. And then I stopped.

There’s no describing the sensation after finishing “Thus spoke Zarathustra“. It was as if a perfect mirror was suddenly and without warning placed before me. There I was, trying to find truth among the ink-stained souls of long-gone trees. While I was reading, the world was floating by.

Thus passed the longest two months of my life. No books were open during that period, except for the manuals needed for school. Time was gained, and invested in introspection and long walks. Battles were lost. Battles were won. The world kept on spinning, indifferent to my book-free existence. Indeed, friends, adolescence is truly the Age of the Extreme.

At the end of those months, however, I came to a conclusion. Books were no longer to be read as guiding lights, shining a path towards one should be striving. Instead, they were to be companions, friends to which one would turn for comfort. They were objects of art, not worship, and needed to be treated as such. The truth, if any, was hiding elsewhere - but that, friends, is a different story, for another sleepless night.

In the years that passed since I’ve found many more great writers, storytellers, bards and poets. I couldn’t remember them all if I tried, so I won’t even try. What I belatedly came to realize was that my insight of those many years ago, hard-earned as it seemed, was also wrong. Books did left their mark on me, through the choices they made me imagine, the points of view they showed, the many sorts and flavours of human emotions and social interactions. Books taught me politics and honour and why cats always land upright. They made me laugh. They made me bleed. They made me who I am.

You are what you read.

1. Book Readers Anonymous - and if it doesn’t exist, it really should [↩]

Global warming is the calamity du jour. We’ve had the Y2K scare, the ozone layer disaster, the planet alignment doom and the meteorite crash panic. It has it all: fanatic followers, a global campaign (led by an ex-future president of USA, no less), rabid nay-sayers, corporate interests, government involvement, hare-brained schemes… The works. According to one side, this flavour of human civilization has about a century left, give or take. The other side maintains that in terms of environmental impact, volcanoes beat us hands-down. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? The debate rages on.

The generated noise was enough, however, to attract regulatory notice. Carbon offsetting, biofuels, alternative energy sources, eco light bulbs - no matter where you read this, your government has probably sponsored or imposed at least one of them, and if it didn’t, the rest of the world is probably busy denouncing it right now as a retrograde, selfish and pig-headed rule, unfit for the brave new world of the XXIst century. They’re probably looking into banning methane-producing monsters (also known as cows) as we speak.

But there’s one place where they’re not going to look - although they should, it’s one of the most inefficient and resource-hungry industry on the planet. No, it’s not unfiltered coal plants. It’s not cows either, evil as they may be. It’s us. Or, to be more specific, it’s us tourists.

Tourism has got to be the number one global warmth generator nowadays. And it starts with the kerosene burnt to take surfers from Finland to Australia or ski enthusiasts from Japan to Switzerland - or, closer to home, the petrol wasted inching along on roads chock-full of caravans. Sure, there are people now paying a so-called voluntary “carbon offset tax”. That’s pretty much as efficient as giving an aspirin to a 3rd degree burn victim. Just makes one feel unjustifiably good about oneself.

Then there’s the resources consumed once the tourist gets there. The food they eat, some of which is more often than not also flown in. The air conditioning in the hotel room. The useless junk that only exists because they need to buy souvenirs. We should also take into account the building and maintenance costs of the hotels, which must be just about the most inefficient form of sheltering known to man - given that most of them are only open “on-season”, 4-6 months a year.

A special place in global-warmer hell should be reserved for low-cost airlines. These glorified buses make it easier than ever for a bloke of average means to set foot on strange, miraculous lands and have a BigMac and a beer thereabouts. Their planes should be cordoned off by flower-wearing hippies, and GreenPeace activists should chain themselves to the landing gears. But no. Hippies are off visiting San Francisco, the hippy capital of the world, and GreenPeace activists are too busy chasing Japan’s whale-hunting fleet in the Antarctic Ocean, which is ok, you know, because their boats are sail-powered and completely environment neutral.

So seriously, stop tourism. It’s an environmental disaster. Get people to have their holidays in their backyard, or at least within cycling distance of their homes. I’m sure it’s going to be a popular idea with the green crowd. Want to see new places, experience new things and cultures? You can see them all on Discovery Travel. Exotic dishes? I’m sure a deli close by will be able to accommodate your wishes.

Just stay at home, and let me enjoy some peace and quiet while I’m on holiday.

No, no, no - you say. Lie? We should teach them to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help them, cross their heart and all that. They have to be honest to a fault, you know, straightforward and trustworthy. That is, just like their parents.

Sounds familiar? Almost every one of you reading these words has heard the sermon about lies and liars and (if you were lucky enough) the eternal rewards set aside for the good honest children. Your parents tried in their own way to teach you that lying is bad for you. And in 99.999% of cases, they failed utterly.

If truthfulness is such a praised and desired quality in today’s society, why aren’t the liars the exception, rather than the rule? If everyone was better off telling all of the truth, all of the time, why aren’t we living in a world where lies and deceit are things of ancient unenlightened past? I’ll tell you why. Because that’s in itself the biggest lie of all.

Indeed, unless you’ve spent your tender years in a vegetative state - in which case, you have my sympathy - you first leaned how to lie from your own parents. They lied to you, willingly or not, and when you lied to them, they rewarded you, thus reinforcing the behaviour. And when you got caught with a lie, they punished you for it, thus forcing you to learn to lie better next time. And so you lied, and so it went, and if anything, you should be thankful to them for teaching you. After all, your own ability to function in society is solidly based upon your ability to lie.

There are indeed degrees to a lie, and you went through them all. First there was the blatant, stupid lie, when you painted the walls with your mother cosmetics and then denied vigorously - while wiping rouge off your hands. Your parents’ feedback made you give that up pretty early in your lying career, and you’re far better off for it.

Then you learned about the difference between telling the truth and being polite, like that time when Aunt Irma brought you that horrid pink sweater for your birthday, and not only you had to thank her, you had to wear the damn thing until she was gone. Or when you had to spend a whole day in your room for telling your daddy’s boss that he’s ugly and he smells - because he did, and it was the truth, and why weren’t you supposed to tell it all of a sudden?

In time you also learned that you can protect your parents from certain aspects of your young life that they strongly disapprove. Like hanging out with friends they don’t like - “Where were you?” “Oh, out playing, ma’” “Not at Johnny’s?” “No, I was with Paulie and Amber with the bikes around the park”. It’s just a little white lie, and they’re now happier for it. Or, if your parents were really strict about lying, you would just “forget” to mention some parts of your day. Lying by omission is not technically a lie - after all, you haven’t said anything untrue. And so it goes.

Of course you’ve seen your parents do it. You’ve seen your mom being all nice and sugary with your new neighbour’s wife, only to talk trash about her with her girlfriends afterwards. You’ve seen dad handling door-to-door salesmen. You’ve seen them engaged in a million social interactions where they lie and hide and smile about it, because that’s how it’s done.

That’s how we’re able to function as a society. There was a film called “Liar Liar” where a young Jim Carrey was compelled by his son’s birthday wish to tell the truth for one whole day. The results were hilarious - in the movie - but also quite scary, when examined in depth. We tell a hundred lies a day and never even think about them. They are ingrained in our social persona, part of the reason we are able to leave among people. Ever tried spending one whole day telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Try it, and tell me how you failed.

So teach your children to lie. If you’re squeamish about the word “lie”, call it something else, but teach them anyway. Teach them how to lie and how to recognize a lie. Teach them about self-serving lies, social lies, political lies, attorney lies and advertiser lies. Teach them how to recognize the intent behind a lie. Teach them how to use lies, fight lies and go beyond lies to find out who they can and cannot trust.

And if you want to teach them to always tell the truth to their parents, you have to make yourself worthy of their trust. Teach them that your love for them is unconditional and not affected by what they say or do. That being your children is reason enough for you to help them and support them to the best of your abilities. Cos’ everybody makes mistakes in life - I know you did - and the best you can do is learn and move on. And if you love them enough, and care about them enough, you will teach them above all this one important lesson.

Everybody lies.