The definition of purity

A friend and I have been recently talking about purity, and what that means: Is Madonna pure? How about Paris Hilton? Brad Pitt? George Clooney? Barack Obama?

Are politicians pure? What about Hollywood? Wall Street?

When I say purity, my friend likes to say "your definition of pure ... right?" Well maybe. And of course since I've been looking at purity the following Rolex ad just caught my attention -


And right in the middle of the ad, it talks about "absolute purity"


Now, I know what Rolex is talking about ... they are talking about removing as many impurities out of their process as possible.

When I talk about purity, I don't mean in the good vs. bad way, I mean in the clarity of vision way - with the following dictionary.com definitions -

* free from foreign of inappropriate elements
* without any discordant quality; clear and true
* being that and nothing else
* independent of sense or experience

I mean the way Wall Street is pure (make more money tomorrow than today and you're still in the game), the way Hollywood is pure (as long as the grosses don't go down, you are our star), and the way strip clubs are pure (the dancer is not going to do anything but dance, and I'm not getting married to the dancer).

So my definition of purity is "to see the truth without any distortion." Basically to not live in a state of denial and to see the truth in reality. Tough to do, but amazing clarity of vision when it happens.

Of course the real question comes from the Rolex ad: how close to "absolute purity" can we get?

See you on the wire

Steven Cardinale