the deception line

deception has been on my mind lately.

in the past month, i have witnessed a whole whole lot of it.

now, to be clear, i think every single one of us is deceptive.

i think it's part of being human, part of our defenses, part of our survival skills,

and yes, part of our dysfunctions.

thing is.....i totally think there's scales......and some people push that needle 

right on up to that FULL of deception line.

and it's some of these FULL people i've been witnessing.

each of these full up people i've watched has their own special flavor of deception.

but here's what's got me intrigued....as i watch, it occurs to me that they are

EQUALLY as deceptive with themselves as with others. so their levels of 

self-deception top the scales right along with their levels of deceiving others.

hmmmm.

i've been thinking about that.

it's kinda interesting.
cause, see, i get tangled in being deceived by them.
i get caught up in how they deceive others...
there's been some thought to how they deceive themselves.
but not much, really. cause the other takes my attention and energy.

so when i started thinking about the amount of self deception goin on,
and comparing the different people who seemed extreme, it caught my eye.

for awhile now i've understood that it's real important to be as honest as you

can with yourself. the reason for that is self growth. i've just figured that you
can't really grow and live fully without it.

and i've figured out that's harder than we think. because of all the little games
and protections we do with ourselves, sometimes it's just about impossible to
realize you're not being honest with yourself because you have somehow convinced
yourself otherwise to protect yourself some way.

it gets crazy.

so i know it's hard.

at times.

and then other times, it's not so hard.

but it's easy to choose not to go for the honesty.
so we do make that choice.

and we can swim in a sea of choices like that.

and the more we do it, the easier it gets.

so, again, there's scales with it all.

but here's a thought/theory i'm mulling around -

i equate authenticity/honesty/integrity with growing and becoming who we
are, becoming all of who we can be.

i understand that's my feelings. not something that needs to be figured as 

everyone else's......but i'm going with that here.

so -

how honest we are with ourselves directly relates to how honest we are

with other people.

and how honest we are with other people directly relates to how honest

we are with ourselves.

which directly relates to our quality of life.

that's it.

that's the big theory.

doesn't sound like much.

and yet, it's totally got my attention.

i swear i'm watching a whole ton of reality twisting,

and it's got me looking at myself. i don't want it.

cause from what i see, it's not really living.

it's one more way we give our life away.

it's one more way we give our life away.

funny, huh?

if someone told us we had cancer, we'd battle so hard not to lose

our life. and yet, we can give it away in a million different little ways

and never even think about it.