The Priceless Lesson I Learned from Watching the HBO Mini-Series "Chernobyl"

If you haven't had a chance to watch the HBO mini-series Chernobyl, I would highly recommend it.  Not just for some amazing history and to understand how the accident at Chernobyl almost took out most Russia and surrounding countries, but for the incredible lessons about life that underlie the whole tragedy.

If you haven't heard of the Chernobyl accident before, that may be because it happened in the 80's.  It was the single worst nuclear power plant failure in history which if it wasn't stopped in time would have become the equivalent of hundreds of bombs like the ones dropped on Japan.  Could you image what that would look like?  Imagine if a force 200x that of what was dropped on Japan unleashed itself in the middle of Russia (or at that time the USSR).  Tens of millions dead and a wide portion of the earth uninhabitable for lifetimes.

I won't spoil for you what happened as you need to watch the series.  All I can say is that I thought I knew some about the accident, but it was much bigger than I ever knew.

So what was the big lesson?  It's simple, your lies will catch up with you.  No matter what in life, your lies will catch up with you.  Whether in your personal life or business life, it will happen.  You may be able to keep a charade going for a while - but eventually, it all comes crumbling down.  The whole setup of the soviet nuclear power program was done by cutting corners to save money - and people knew it.  They knew that what happened could happen.  They just thought it was so implausible that "why worry about something that could never happen."   Famous last words "That's never going to happen!"  ---until it does.

In your life, it is much easier to tell the truth and do what is right, suffer the consequences, and move on.  If you continue to compound things and try to keep a lie going, when it does fall apart, it will happen in a much bigger way and the consequences will be much more severe.  It is better to suffer a little pain in the short term than suffer catastrophic pain in the long term.  Always remember that.