Mark Twain reportedly once said If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember

anything. This outlook, one that I share, has profoundly affected my attitude towards life as a
whole. For example, the first job I ever held was in a supermarket chain. This eventually led to
me spending a lot of time doing work on my own in the back rooms of the store, where I could
have easily slacked off. But, because this lack of effort would be evident to the morning crew, I
would have to make up increasingly elaborate reasons for why I had done my work so poorly. I
found that because of this, it was actually easily to simply work diligently, so that my share of
my teams effort truthfully represented my salary, rather than lie and cheat through my work.
Even before being hired there, my truthfulness was tested by my participation in the Boy
Scouts. The Scout Law dictated that we be Trustworthy, among other values, but, stuck in
the woods alone, some Scouts tended to slightly shy away from these values in favor of having
more fun. Loose knives, unsafe volumes of fire, and widespread shirking of duties were only the
symptoms of an underlying lack of discipline when not supervised by adults or older scouts.
While it would have been very easy for me to fall into such a pattern of undisciplined actions,
before some great stunt or mis-undertaking, I would always consider the consequences- and how
I would explain them to the adult leaders (and my own parents) later on if things went wrong
later on. In the end, I would almost always decide that involving myself in such behavior would
be, in the end, not worth having to make up excuses and alibis later on, and would usually
remove myself from the situation.
My commitment to telling and acting truly are not always easy- and, truth be told, I do
not always perform it completely or perfectly. But, even as I enter a time of some of the most
novel experiences- and easiest ways to do great wrong- I recommit myself to this virtue. Far
better that I do no wrong, and be able to say so honestly, than act dishonorably and further sully
myself trying to cover the fact.