When I first moved to Ojai there was a man here who taught at a local boarding school.   He claimed he had terminal cancer, but didn’t have enough money for treatment.   He was a lovely young man.   People were nice to him, and they even held a fundraiser on his behalf.   What they didn’t know was that his only illness was sociopathy, so he ended up absconding with the money and disappearing from sight.   No one, to my knowledge, ever saw or heard from him again.  I imagine him living under an assumed name, perhaps in Costa Rica, and having a hell of a time.

I admit that back then I had a tinge of admiration that someone could pull off such a feat, although mostly I was incredulous—utterly bewildered by how anyone could be so boldly immoral.  I typically feel overwhelmed with guilt if I inadvertently bump into someone, and hold the weird distinction of being the only grown person I know who never stole anything as a child.   Once, I even got in trouble because I naively caught my parents lying when they returned a lamp I had broken.   They claimed it was defective, but I spoke up and told the salesman that I actually broke it.   When I got home I was yelled at for not going along with the lie.

As that kid inside me who never stole anything, I have little sympathy for lying and stealing, but I find that I have a certain sympathy for the Ojai sociopath.   After the extraordinary kindness shown to me in the last year, I realize just how touching and heart-warming it is to be appreciated, and to hear people tell you things that otherwise they might have thought, or perhaps more accurately, neglected to think when not faced directly with life’s impermanence.

When things feel really good, it is not difficult to see how wanting or needing them can turn pathological.   I have never felt as loved or as taken care of in my life as I have felt in the last year of struggling with cancer.   In fact, It felt so good to be so well nurtured that there were a few times that I found myself wanting to ask for help when I didn’t need it.

Psychologists call this “secondary gain.”  There is the gain one has from being taken care of, and then there is the emotional, secondary gain of being paid attention to and feeling loved.   Sometimes the secondary gain can even lead to creating symptoms that aren’t there, or even lying about them, in order to receive the benefits of feeling loved.

I once asked a rabbi if it was a sin to lie.   I knew that the commandment about false witness wasn’t exactly the same as lying, and I thought I might be able to pull one over on him.   He immediately shot back:  “What’s the purpose of the lie?”   I had no answer, because, of course, I hadn’t thought that deeply about it.   I said, “I don’t know.  It’s a hypothetical.”  The rabbi responded, “Well then, it depends on why you are lying.   If you are lying to protect someone else’s dignity, then it is not a sin.  But if you are lying to protect yourself, then you are stealing the other person’s dignity, and stealing is a sin.”  I learned two things from that conversation: lying is all about intention, and never to try to pull something over on a rabbi.   You will lose.

Fortunately, I am aware enough of my own intentions to know when I am asking for help for secondary gain; and I have been blessed, or cursed, with enough guilt to choose not to do it (well, at least most of the time).     I also recognize that there is a difference between the sociopath who guiltlessly lies for personal gain and a person who lies and struggles with it. Thanks to Obamacare, I won’t need to be holding any fundraisers.