Preoccupations and lies.

Again, many things have changed emotionally since my last post.

I'm fine now. In fact, I started to get a lot better only shortly after my last post. Why? Honestly, I think it was all the video games. Video games, for reasons I can't explain, seem to numb all my social senses, including loneliness. I should probably elaborate, but that's a subject for another post.

Lately I've noticed that my thoughts haven't been moving from one thing to another as I would like but recurring over the same thoughts over and over. It's become more of a preoccupation rather than a "thought stream" if you will. Mostly, I seem to be preoccupied with thoughts of my family, and a person.

A conversation with a friend today led me to understand that I do hide things from time to time. I typically characterize myself as someone who is very open and honest, but during conversation with this friend I realized that I was hiding something - for a good reason, and I was quick to explain why I had to not reveal something. Still, I couldn't help but notice that I almost didn't catch that was what I was doing...I was so sure that I was an open person that I didn't realize I actually don't share everything...just most things. Anything that is convenient for me to share, I do. And that is the vast majority of things I want to share...but I do have secrets. And I also have things that I shouldn't share, because they would damage myself or another person, or can't, because they are other people's secrets...but I digress.

This knowledge of my preoccupations coupled with my realization about my secrets led me to think about lying.  Lying, I believe, is less about making up a convincing story or creating something that isn't true but more about concealing what is true. When you lie your goal is not to create a fine tale but to do whatever possible to hide the truth. Should you tell a lie, you care less about what they believe so long as it's not the truth that you seek to hide. For instance, you don't care if your parents believe the dog knocked over the lamp or the tooth fairy, so long as they don't know it is you who actually broke the lamp.

Well, I sometimes forget about this, but I'm a really good liar. You kind of need to be a good liar to even hope to be a counselor...not because you lie to your patients (never, ever) but because sometimes you must conceal a truth that would be harmful for your client to hear (such as, you not liking them). I used to lie a lot, before following God a little more closely. At one time I was so good at it, I hid something very obvious for an entire summer without getting caught.

These days there is not much use for that skill, besides keeping a poker face from time to time and "picking my battles" when I would really like to say a truth that the world is not quite ready for.

Getting back to preoccupations, in a roundabout way (as you can see by the lengthy explanation above) I discovered that even though I can lie/conceal truth to other people I simply cannot do so to myself. My preoccupations reveal something to me I do not wish to believe. What that is...I am concealing for now. Sorry, but it's not really all that important to this blog post anyway. What I mean to say is, I have tried to lie even to myself, but failed...and I doubt it will ever be possible to lie to myself without regressing to a less self-aware state.

Anyone who reads these posts will notice I am a holistic person. My solitary boast: I have done a really good job of learning about myself and how my mind works. That said, such self-knowledge has made it impossible for me to not know something about myself of which I'd rather remain unaware. Like I said, I've been preoccupied with my family and with a person. At this point, my actions on these thoughts are all up to me, but I cannot avoid what these preoccupations reveal to me about my feelings...revelations that would be more helpful if they were hidden...at least, at this point, I believe they would. Maybe I would be more susceptible to doing something stupid if they were there and I was unaware of them.

Time will tell.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for truth of thought.

On crushes.

I told someone the other day that I don't like having secrets and I have very few of them, and these sorts of blog posts are further evidence.

It seems despite my reasonable and genuine desire to remain single for a while, I can't avoid having the singular nuisance of "getting crushes." Before you waste time reading this post to find out who, keep in mind that I wish to ignore these feelings, rather than give them credit. Disclosing who they are will get me no further towards that goal. (Also, if you try to guess who they are, you will most likely be wrong. My true emotions are a lot more discrete these days.)

I like to remind myself that there is actually a hormone released by the brain when you "get crushes" that leads you to feel like someone is more similar to you than they actually are. Fascinating, isn't it?

I also like to remind myself of the amazingly frequent deception caused by my feelings/emotions. Responding to those now would be like buying something from the same conman who's tricked you into buying junk for the hundredth time!

I'm not often good at following my own advice, and I know what I would tell myself at this point. Still, sometimes it's hard to judge the line between doing what I would normally do and responding to a feeling. To simply avoid all women would be a bit drastic as most of my friends, because of the demographics around here, are women. That would be pretty lonely.

Another obstacle here is the fact that I can't control other people having crushes on me. Not only that, but if they're not aggressive like some women *cough cough*, I can't really tell if they do. The obvious ones are easy because I can just avoid them, but the others just appear to me as if they really like me as a friend. I'm oblivious!!

I think it would be unwise for me to not develop friendships with women at all for the next two-three+ months that I won't be dating anyone, since after that I'm quite sure if I did pursue someone it would be someone I've already been good friends with for a long time, to avoid past mistakes.

Pray for me that I may pursue my vocation as a single man until I'm ready to date again.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for good judgement of the heart.

Secrets.

I am fascinated by silence.

Most of my day today has been filled with silence. My social plans fell through, and so I ended up spending a lot of time alone with a book...I went on a long walk. I even went into church and hung out with Jesus for a while (I intended to go to mass, but it turns out they had adoration and moved it to 7).

Silence often speaks louder than noise, and gets the point across better. When you don't have the distraction of things on the outside whistling for your attention, you can better hear your voice on the inside. You can more easily reflect, stop and think. God finds it easier to talk to you, too.

I'm even more fascinated by silence when it comes to the way people interact. The things we are unwilling to say to one another...the one "secret" that everyone knows but will not discuss. Silence really does speak loudly.

I found out today that most people are oblivious to the observations I make of other people. Sometimes I can tell how people feel about me, or other people, just in the way they walk, the way they look at what's around them, the way they position themselves, their expressions, what they say and how they say it. Sometimes I'll move people like chess pieces into entering a situation or conversation where they will unconsciously reveal something they're thinking, all without them ever knowing it. It's not an exact science, but it works most of the time. Am I manipulative or just clever? Or perhaps you think I'm bullshitting you. I'm not out to convince anyone of anything, so make your choice any way you like!

This sort of thing has come into play in my life recently. I have a group of friends who I am sure all know what I know, but none of us are willing to say anything about it. It truly is for the best, since it just wouldn't be prudent to talk about it at this point, but it still fascinates me how we all hint to each other our knowledge but never quite openly speak about it. It makes me literally giggle sometimes!

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was that silence was given its proper respect.