Just be honest and true,
And love all you do.
Then somehow, what you’re looking for,
Will find a way to find you.

But – even if it doesn’t,
At least you were honest and true
And loved what you do

Our honesty is the one of the best gifts we can give to those around us.  It is also one of the best gifts we can give to ourselves, and we don’t even have to wrap it.

Sometimes, we waste too much time dealing in that which is not ‘fact’:  making decisions on the basis of what we ‘think’ as opposed to what we ‘know’.  The reality is that life, and a lot of the things within it, are uncertain.  We don’t always have the benefit of evidence when assessing things, and without that there will always be a complete myriad of different perspectives by which to interpret the same thing, sometimes creating a confusion we can spend many hours trying to (unsuccessfully) ever figure out.

But what might help, and what we can do at least, is understand ourselves – and this comes only from being honest about our feelings and emotions.  The better we know ourselves, and the more we acknowledge the ways in which we think and feel, the less time we will spend languishing in the bottomless depths of uncertainty.  The right choices for us will become more apparent, and we can sooner identify the things we need to pay attention to from those which are nothing more than pure, fabricated speculation.

I think that repressing emotion is one of the most damaging things you can possibly do to yourself, and it happens a lot – people bottling up their real feelings to save themselves from the discomfort of how an acquaintance, or maybe even themselves, might react to the truth.  This may seem to make life easier sometimes by avoiding any complicated, immediate repercussions, but in the long-term it leads to confusion and stress whereby one cannot differentiate between their own feelings, and those of another, and ultimately this leads to unhappiness.  A life which isn’t yours.  This even extends to what’s on the outside.  Are we doing the job we love or the job that has the salary we think we should be earning?  Are we wearing what we feel good in or did we select our attire today on the basis of what we think particular other people will think we look good in?  Do you hide your tears because you have the strength to or is it that you just don’t want people to realise the shocking truth that you are, in actuality, just a mere human being?  The latter option in each of these situations are a form of repressing emotion – an inability to say, “Actually, what I really want, and how I really feel, is….”.  

And if you cannot say those words, you’ll never end up getting what you really want from your life.
And that’s a pretty grim prospect, right?

And if we’re living a life which isn’t really ours, and saying and doing only what we hope will please others or save ourselves stress, we are only intensifying the scope for misunderstanding and miscommunication which is already responsible for the waste of so much time and emotion.  We are finding it harder to make our own decisions because our minds are messier, and we are finding it harder to express our feelings to others because we’re consequently unsure how we really feel, so when we speak, is what we’re saying even the truth at all?  And if even we’re not sure what we mean, how the hell is the listener going to interpret it?  Such misunderstanding can be dangerous, occasionally responsible for the erosion of once-beautiful friendships and relationships for no real reason at all besides a lack of clarity over the true intention of what was said or done.

We can’t always determine the way in which other people will interpret the things we say and do, but by being honest and true we can at least reduce the chances of misunderstanding.  It’s not always easy to be an open-book, metaphorical nudity in a crowded room, but keeping up a lie is much, much harder.  The honest approach is also much more fair on those around us even if the things we truly think and feel don’t necessarily reflect the way they might hope we think and feel.

The only people you need in your life are people who respect your true thoughts and feelings even if they don’t always agree with them.  If somebody can’t do that, why the hell do you care about that person anyway?  Say goodbye.  That’s a person with the potential to fuck up your life before you’ve even realised it.

The more honest we are with ourselves and the more we understand ourselves, the less time we spend agonising over the limitless what’s and if’s.  It is what it is.  We are who we are.  We meant what we said and we said what we meant, and if everybody was able to do that – maybe misunderstanding could join the likes of legwarmers and trouser-skirts and be just some ugly thing of the past.

Be true to yourself always.  You’re never going to regret a thing that way.

Song of the Day:  Collin McLoughlin – Titanium (cover)

I always like a good cover song but this is just beautiful.  ‘Nuff said.