What's Real? What's Fake?

I don't have kids.  However, if  I did, I would school them on discerning what is real and what is fake when it comes to people.  My instruction to him/her would be: everyone is fake until proven otherwise.  Period.  It doesn't mean that you shouldn't respect them or not treat them fairly.  It just means that you don't submit your feelings to them until they are deemed worthy.  Then I would teach that child what questions to ask to help determine someone's authenticity as well as how to pay attention to actions.

Because it's not easy out here to avoid people who have agendas not congruent to your own.  It doesn't necessarily mean that they are bad people.  It just means that you don't want the same thing or maybe you don't wish to take the same path to arrive to a common goal.  

I was thrusted back into the dating world back in 2012 after the death of my wife and I was not ready at all.  I moved way too quickly and found myself in multipe situations with people who did not prioritize my heart.  T.I. once rapped that, "...all I wanna do is just feel love.  Even if I know it ain't real love..."  That applied to me 100% and I had to be honest with myself and realize that I was approaching things completely wrong.

Those experiences allowed me to grow and flourish to become something even better than I thought I could be.  I'm so thankful for that.  But those experiences also taught me to trust what I see and to not allow myself to get consumed in something that's not meant for me.  

I guess what I'm trying to say is: we usually know when something is not genuine.  We can even pick up on people who are fooling themselves just to try and fool us.  What we need is the confidence and courage to walk away from it until something better comes along.  Because we deserve the best for ourselves.

Learn The Difference Between "Respectful" and "Fake"

In 2017, being respectful is going the way of the dinosaur.  People have no chill these days.  No respect for the elderly.  No respect for women and children.  No respect for themselves.  The way that we talk to people has to change.

At one time in society, people used to be aware of their audience before they spoke.  They chose their words wisely because they cared about their reputation and they didn't want to offend certain groups.  Men would not curse if women or kids around.  Now women curse just as much as men do now.  Kids do a healthy share of cursing, too.

I discussed that recently to someone (not a Millenial) who responded to me by saying "people who hold their tongues are 'fake'".

Yes, that's right.  People who choose their words around others are "fake" in her eyes.  She explained how everyone in her family curses freely around one another.  It doesn't matter the age, if you are in the room, then you may hear a curse word.  Just deal with it.  Not speaking freely is being fake?  That was the craziest thing I'd ever heard.  Why is showing restraint a bad thing?

Don't get me wrong.  What a person does in their home is their business.  But, some people do it no matter where they are.  At the grocery store, at restaurants, in other people's homes.

There's a time and a place for everything.  You don't drop f-bombs in your boss's office.  Why?
Because it's considered as being disrespectful in the workplace.  No one unleashes curse words when speaking to the preacher at church.  Why?  Because it's a sign of disrespect.  Or in her eyes, it's being fake, I guess.

So, why do people look at you sideways when you ask them not to curse in public?  Is it that hard not to curse?

We keep making excuses for doing what we want to do.  At some point in society, there will be no rules or standards.

Liars Come A Dime A Dozen

I've been back in the dating world for about five months now and there have been two things that's been made abundantly clear to me: one of them is that the world is filled with liars.

Not so much the type of liar who tries to scheme something out of you.  But the type of liar who will tell you what you want to hear knowing that they have no intention of following up.  I hate it when someone says that they're going to do something knowing that they're not going to make an attempt at all.  I am a man of my word and I absolutely do not say I'm going to do something without doing it (barring some emergency).  Lord knows that I've dealt with my share of people who don't subscribe to the same theory though.

The second thing that I've learned is that: women lie just as much as men.  And they're not as good at it as they may have once been historically.  Lying is definitely no longer a "man thing" in 2015.  From the lies told on Facebook to the lies told in reality, so many women appear to be in some invisible competition that requires them to act more than what they are.  Sometimes I look at some of the things that my lady FB friends post and think to myself, "Doesn't she know that some of her friends know her in real life?"

But the pressure of 5,000 "friends" will drive some people to do so many things just to maintain their online reputation.  Even if it soils their real life reputation.

I guess all I can do is try to sort out the good from the bad.  I understand that not everyone is honest and that some lies aren't meant to be harmful (telling someone with a messed up hairstyle that it "looks good" to avoid hurting their feelings).

Lying may be a necessary evil in some situations.  But to what I would guess is a majority of American citizens, it's not that big of a deal to lie to someone you know or don't know just to get some sort of temporary (and mostly meaningless) victory from it.