This is a story about Pig-Pen. Pig-Pen felt bad because of the flies that pestered him. He really didn’t like the flies. “What should I do?” he kept wondering. He didn’t realize that the flies were attracted to the cloud of dirt and filth that hovered around him in a cloud. And Pig-pen loved his cloud of filth. One day he was caught in a short but heavy downpour that showed him clean. This is when he exclaimed, "In one minute the rain has washed away what took me all day to accomplish.” He sometimes referred with pride to the cloud that surrounded him as the “dust of ancient civilizations.” He wanted to impress Violet of whom he was quite fond. He cleaned himself up for a little time but then was totally unrecognizable, so that didn’t help. Another time he tried to fool Peppermint Patty by keeping only one side of his body clean. It didn’t last long as soon enough the flies revealed the trick. He himself didn’t look at himself as dirty. In his eyes, his dirt represented a very valuable commodity. “Don't think of it as dust. Just think of it as the dirt and dust of far-off lands blowing over here and settling on me!. It staggers the imagination! I may be carrying the soil that was trod upon by Solomon or Nebuchadnezzar or Genghis Khan! One then may think, “Poor Pig-Pen; he is a relic of history, yet no-one appreciates him. He is harassed by these naughty flies and he can’t even get a girlfriend. That’s not fair.” Poor Pig-Pen indeed. Instead of realising that where there is no filth there are no flies, he had rationalised the dirty and lazy habits of his life into a lie that he himself believed. He had even convinced others that he was the victim and not the cause of his own predicament. Once, after bathing and dressing in clean clothes, Pig-Pen stepped outside his house, and instantaneously became dirty and disheveled, whereupon he declared "You know what I am? I'm a dust magnet!" On another occasion, Pig-Pen decided it was important to have clean hands, but after failing to wash them, he gave up realizing that he had "reached a point of no return." So he also had a problem with consistency and determination. Whereas Pig-Pen is a fictional character, we may need to realise that there is truth to learn through Pig-Pen’s predicament. If we live life with integrity and honesty, we do not have a problem with negative rumors against us. Or if we do, like flies who will not remain in a clean place, these rumors and gossip will go away through our own transparency because, “Where there is no dirt, flies don’t stay!”
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