If you follow the publishing world even a tiny bit, you’ve no doubt heard about the scandal involving “Three Cups of Tea” author Greg Mortenson.
What’s such a tragedy is how utterly pointless this is. Mortenson had plenty of great stories from his world travels and he’s done a tremendous amount of good work towards helping educate girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
But now it’s obvious that he’s exaggerated some of his stories and, sadly, invented some from whole cloth. Worse, the report on Sunday by “60 Minutes” makes it clear that not all of the money from Mortenson’s charity has been spent as smartly as it should have been. Way too much has gone to promoting Mortenson’s books and inflating his standard of living.
Why? What drives someone who has achieved fame and success and a measure of wealth to take an unnecessary risk like this in order to live a slightly more luxurious life? Why do we succumb to temptation to improve our standing when we already are far more fortunate and blessed than billions of other people on this planet?
Two cups is enough. It’s up to each of us to remember that. Happiness and grace become only more elusive when we decide to exchange our integrity for a extra piece of silver that we never needed in the first place.
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Signs and Wonders will be released in August. You can read more about it here.
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