Count yourselves lucky, you just got screwed by the best

There’s nothing more deflating than the realization that we have just been duped. 

Played. Cheated. Ripped off. Taken advantage of. Deceived by the enticing charm of something or someone. 

It’s such a painfully empty feeling of foolishness and naiveté. Like walking into what we thought was a dinner party, but it’s actually a sales pitch with snacks. Or opening what appeared to be a birthday card, when it’s actually just a brilliantly executed direct mail piece with content highly relevant to our lifestyle and a vanity url that uses our name. Blech. 

What’s interesting about getting duped is, it’s not about the cash value of the thing we have mistaken believed in. It’s the paranoia that strikes deep as a result. 

Because we start wondering to ourselves, damn, where else in our lives are we being taken advantage of? How many other times have we drank the cocktail of false hope? And who else might be secretly playing the fool with our soul? 

Townsend’s anthemic rock song comes to mind:

Tip my hat to the new constitution, take a bow for the new revolution, smile and grin at the change all around, pick up my guitar and play, just like yesterday, get on my knees and pray, we don’t get fooled again. 

The sad part is, we probably will. Humans have very short memories. We learn nothing. Most people are poor historians. As much as we would love to tell the powers that be that what lay at the center of our life is not for sale, it probably is. 

Everybody gets duped eventually. We all feel foolish for having placed faith in such bizarre stories. It’s an unavoidable trait of the human condition. 

The secret is not beating ourselves into a bloody pulp each time it happens. 

That brand of forgiveness is what allows us to move the boulder of shame that blocks the entrance to our heart. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Will you continue to fool yourself into believing that there is a chance everything will go according to plan?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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