Shocking! I was sitting here thinking about that movie I saw on TV as a teenager called "Brian's Song" - it was about two football players who, against all odds, became excellent friends. All based on a true story (of Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers, one white and the other black). It was a great story for its time, really. Not just the aspirations it had toward respectfully probing racial schisms but also because it addressed courage under fire and, most importantly, solid and real friendship(s). I read the book (titled "I Am Third") at the time. Can hardly remember it now ~ and can't remember Gale Sayers explaining where he was third to WHAT (but I'm sure he said so somewhere in the text). That movie played almost forty years ago! Can you imagine? James Caan and Billy Dee Williams, now old farts on TV shows occasionally. That's the shocking part, to me. "Forty years ago" still, and always will, seem like an awful long time for me to be remembering stuff.  It's very unsettling, more than less. Anyway, I decided to make up my own "I Am Third". Two reasons: 1.) because I've thought I was *third* for a very long time now, and, 2.) forty years from now, it won't matter what I write today to any living thing, so my introspection seems harmless [*sigh*].

     First is the *truth*. I am old (like a velociraptor I'm old, or so I feel sometimes) so I have had more than plenty of time to see what the word "truth" is to most people. It's their version of it, usually. It's an interpretation of it as per what is hoped it means, often. It's the "truth" that makes the most convenient sense in their usability of it, almost always. This is all human nature. Nothing so new or terribly wrong with it (although that sort of "truthing" gets risky, in my estimation). I've risen above nothing, but have powerlessly accepted one major thing: in all those descriptions of truth, all those attachments to truth, all that *human control issue* nonsense, there is only one truth for any ONE thing. That's it! We can call it whatever we want, we can color it however we choose. It's still just that one fundamental truth and half the time we don't even know what it is before we start doctoring it! So, for me, the most important thing in life is to dig through the man-made layers and find what the truth is at the core of it. And I give it the benefit of the doubt always. I look for it without expecting myself to like it. Or for it to accommodate me in any way whatsoever. In fact, I don't even ever expect to find it (but intend to keep looking, anyway).

     Second is *fairness*.  The word fairness is another tricky thing. The first way we feel it is the way we felt it when we were 9, I suspect - "But ... it's not FAIR that I have both arithmetic and science homework in the same night...." That's not an issue of fairness at all, in my opinion. It's just one of those things that suck as all the factors in a day slide down the hill in the wrong order. And as adults we feel/do it much the same. "It's not fair that I have to pay this much sales tax on already aggressively overpriced merchandise," etc. Fairness is a catchall word for too many things. Are you really being "fair" when you let the person ahead of you get the parking space that he deserves and got to first? Or are you patting yourself on the back like an agile monkey for not doing what you considered doing at first: hitting the gas and stealing that coveted parking space because you needed it more than some irksome stranger did? Taking your turn and acting in a civilized way should not be considered "fairness." It's called being trained right. In my definition of it, fairness is not much of an "action" word, incidentally. It's about knowing that each one of us was a wee baby once, with big dreams. Each of us had scraped knees, broken hearts, terrifying moments, frightfully embarrassing missteps AND nothing we've ever felt, not now or then or this time next year, is (in itself as a concept) "new." Or individually patented by our summarily put-upon selves. So, then, I think that the fairness to which I aspire is knowing that the best expectation there is to be had is that it isn't about the crap, pain, unfortunate events or pissed-off wildebeests that come rolling down the mountain. It's about knowing that we're all pretty much on common ground as the avalanche happens. That some people duck and dodge more skillfully than others is luck. True fairness across-the-board comes in realizing we're all avoiding the same stuff (and simply hiding behind variously sized bushes as we do it).

     And third, then, is me. On my endless search of "truth" - a 'thing' that I've already given the power to NOT be what I'm looking for. Finding it will be enough, I suppose - no need to steal its thunder by expecting too much. And, no, I'll never find it, anyway. I'll always believe it's there, nearer than it ever could be (that's what they call faith, I guess ... with all of its head-spinning labels and uniforms). But I'll quietly assume I'll never be in the scary position of knowing the ultimate truths. And my search will be a fair one, too. I won't judge the know-it-alls and zealots out there who profess to have it all figured out. They NEED that "parking space" a lot more than the likes of me does. Ask me forty years from now, though? I may have an entirely different conviction about the matter. It is, after all, just the human condition ...