Many of us know the phrase, “No is a complete sentence”. Brought into popular consciousness as a method for reminding us that it’s OK to set boundaries to protect ourselves, it’s now so popular that a quick Google search tossed back 208,000,000 results.

Typing, “Yes is a complete sentence” into my Google search engine, however, yielded a mere 5,450,000 results—the majority of which appeared to focus on the grammatical aspects of the query.

Why is this on my mind?

This past week I was targeted by a scam that invites keynote speakers to South Africa on behalf of the Anglican Church—and I am going to tell you that, initially, I fell for it. After all, who would think keynote speakers were cool enough to have their own scam??

As the email exchange progressed, however, any number of things caused me to start digging; (Not the least of which was the inclusion of the phrase, “You were fingered to speak at this event….” Hence, the alternate title of this post….) and links to sites exposing the scam quickly came to light. If you’re interested, here are the links: click here or click here.

Wow.

As I considered my initial, enthusiastic responses, my first reaction was to be embarrassed. How could I have been so foolish?

But then I gave it more thought: was it so terrible that my initial response was “Yes”? – was it so terrible to be willing to speak at an event that was billed as a conference to motivate/educate/inspire others?

All of which led me to the idea that – 99% of the time—I’m happier being someone who says, “Yes” to things. And while I have no doubt that continuing to say “Yes” to whomever was on the other end of the email exchanges would have led me into a very unpleasant situation, I’m not inclined to change this aspect of my personality.

Because, in my mind, that would end in a more disquieting kind of fraud: the kind where I defraud myself.