Continued To Take Personal Inventory

Bemuse: To confuse or bewilder.

I must say that I'm a little bemused that my sister - despite her expressions of gratitude for my generous response to the Great Money Diversion Caper - has not offered to . . . you know . . . give me any of the money.  It's one thing to state that it would be ridiculous for money to ruin a relationship, another altogether when you're the one with the money.

Thus, my relentless pursuit of greater knowledge of my inner motives - my true motives - must continue.  I have in my mind the belief that I behave a certain way.  I also have a belief that I would have behaved in the past in a consistent way in the course of events of which I now have a full accounting.  I'm pretty good at bullshitting myself when it serves my own selfish interests.  I wonder if I would have been so kind and understanding if my sister had called me a couple of years ago and reported that her kids were gifted this money.  Maybe and maybe not.  It sure is easy to be magnanimous in hindsight.

My wife often accuses me of hidden motives.  Sometimes she's obviously right and sometimes I'm surprised that I'm being blamed for something that I think I'm innocent of.  I'm guessing there are plenty of cases where I'm fooling myself into behaving in a less than savory way.

I have been musing on the psychological test where students were paid in cash for self-reporting the number of correct answers they got on a test.  I'm sure that I would have been rigorously honest; less sure after I heard that fully 75% of the participants lied.  The facts are this: I probably would have lied and I would have justified by lying must a little bit.  I wouldn't have claimed that I got all of the answers right but the odds are that I would have collected a little more money than I was rightfully due.

"Continued to take personal inventory . . . "