It’s September first — which means I’ve got a new editorial up at Networking Times.

This one is called, “Life Is Like a Box of Tofu.” Here’s how it starts:

“While at a party during the 1920s, the young F. Scott Fitzgerald observed a man named Leonard Zelig who had an uncanny ability to take on the demeanor and even physical appearance of those around him. Over the following two decades the chameleonesque man showed up again and again, fitting seamlessly into dozens of different social circles, from Nazi Germany to the White House, always blending in perfectly. Amazing …

“Except that none of it ever happened. The real Fitzgerald never saw or even heard of Leonard Zelig. Because like his heir apparent Forrest Gump, Zelig was a complete fiction.

“Zelig—Fitzgerald party, White House appearance and all—was invented by Woody Allen for his 1983 film of the same name. Gump, the creation of novelist/satirist Winston Groom, was brought to life on film in 1994 by Robert Zemeckis. And like the brilliantly clueless Chance the Gardener, created by novelist Jerzy Kosinksi, filmmaker Hal Ashby and actor Peter Sellers in Being There (1979), they are fascinating characters precisely because they are not really characters at all but take on whatever character others see in them.

“Something like money…”

You can read the whole piece here (no cost, but registration is required).

The bottom line of it is this:

Money, or the lack of it, does not decide who you are. You decide what money is. Life, as it turns out, is not a box of chocolates: you not only know whatcha gonna git, you determine it.