Love the way society tells you to

"Loving someone is not the same as being in love with someone" 

                 So often we become slaves to what society tells us were supposed to do and what were supposed to feel, that we forget the most important factor of being truly alive. We focus on pleasing others rather than focusing on what makes us truly happy. I'd like to immediately take the time out to clarify what I mean by true happiness vs what we consider to be happiness, when in reality it is just immediate gratification. I am in no way shape or form condoning or promoting unfaithfulness or promiscuity. Happiness can not be achieved by jumping from body to body and that type of behavior is often the reaction to something much deeper than just casual sex. I do however promote to my friends, family, and especially my impressionable adolescent students that you can not achieve true happiness if you do not know what it is that you want, where it is that you want to go, and the steps you need to get there. That often means unfortunately letting go of what it is that everyone thinks were supposed to be doing, or who were supposed to be with.
            As young adults it is a sad but true fact that there is a constant pressure placed on us by society to follow the route laid out before us by those who think they have all the answers. Your significant other must fit the mold in order to please your parents, your friends, your co workers and just about any one else you may encounter on your roads together. We all would like to think that we choose our partners based on love and compatibility but there is a checks and balances system that plays within our heads from the moment you both have encountered one another. Does he/she have a job, have a car, make money? As we get older the superficial questions transform and become: Were they raised in a loving family, are their religious beliefs compatible with mine, do they have a degree, do they want children...etc? It's hard to think of a time when I have encountered someone that has had the potential to become more than a friend, that hasn't faced the mental inquisition of at least one or more of the previous questions.  I'm not saying having certain standards or wants is a bad thing. I do however feel that once these standards created absolutely by society play a part in controlling your happiness that is where the problem begins.
            Refusing to take a chance on someone who doesn't fit into a neat checklist that you have created in your mind is just as bad as holding on to someone who does fit into that checklist. Often I find people stay in relationships or refuse to enter into a relationship because of what others may think or see. I have had countless of conversations with my peers in which we have come to agree that our parental acceptance of our significant others is a key factor as to whether the relationship will work out. I've also encountered conversations in which my friends remain in relationships because they are socially accepted within their circle, though they are completely unhappy with what the relationship has become. Daily monotonous "Good Morning" texts or "I Love You's" have taken then place of truly being IN love. Learning to love someone because they fit into the life you think you are supposed to be living is not the same as being completely and utterly happy to be in love with someone.
            The only thing promised to us from the time that we are born... is death. Whatever else it is that we do with our lives along the journey is a choice that we must make and live with on our own. Life is too unpredictable to spend one moment of that precious time complicating it or being unhappy. There are so many responsibilities that we have to do in order to even consider doing what it is that we want to do. I think it is important to throw out the rule book from time to time and spend some time being in love rather than telling our selves that we love who we are or that we love who we're with. Take the time to be in love with being in love don't become a  mindless fool that does everything society tells you is socially acceptable.      

Reality vs Perception

"The assumption that seeing is believing makes us susceptible to visual deceptions"

With every passing year I gather life lessons, wisdom, and experiences. As my twenty fourth year has just gotten underway I've encountered and witnessed countless situations in which the appearance of a situation takes precedent to the true reality. It is easy for our subconscious and imagination to take hold of and manipulate information that we have heard. It is even easier to take and misconstrue information that we believe we've seen. Believing none of what I hear and half of what I see is a motto I hold near and dear to my heart. Allowing your imagination to run wild will land you in a lifestyle filled with assumptions and inaccuracies. Unfortunately this is a seed that is planted in our minds from a young age therefore often leading to destructive thoughts and behavior particularly during adolescence.

Many often confuse the ideals of perspective and point of view with the ideal of what it is to be perceptive. While they are closely related they are not the same. You see having a point of view or a certain perspective on an issue requires you to actually know the issue, to know the truth, the facts, the full details. Those who choose to have a perspective or point of view on something they know nothing about directly fall into the categories of judgmental and ignorant. This is where perception comes to play. You see perception requires no fact, no information it is solely connected with the sense of sight. Your perception is formed by your consciousness and intuition based on what you see, or what it is you think you see. I personally have directly strayed away from ever calling myself perceptive, because perception often leads to forming opinions based on an assumption formed by my imagination. It appears that we as a society have not only become accustomed to assuming what we believe to be true we take it upon our selves to spread these assumptions in order to infect the minds and lives of others.

It has become a simple magic trick really. One person hears an interesting detail which then becomes a fact in their mind. That false fact then becomes public news to any and every one that will lend an ear to listen. Friendships lost, relationships ended, egos bruised, and reputations destroyed solely from a single rapidly perceptive thought put out into the atmosphere. The effects of the illusion are so damaging yet powerful they often go unnoticed because they fall desperately under the guise of: "keeping it real", or "looking out for a friend". Words, thoughts, ideas destroying people's lives often turn out at the end of the day to not even be true. And of course those on the receiving end can always go about saying they don't care or demonstrating how unaffected they are... but the fact remains that their reality has been tarnished by a perception. The falsehood of living in a lie doesn't just affect solely the person living in that lie. People who refuse to live in reality always affect those of us attempting to keep both our feet stable on the ground.

The hardest thing about life is living with your own personal truth. That is a very difficult feat for many so instead they choose to live in the shadows of other's truths or create false truths. The true truth of the matter is that wont be effective for long and will eventually cause self destruction. Destroying someone else's life wont make your life any better. Take time to evaluate your self and your own truth. Be present in your own life and be mindful that everyone else's business should not be any one else's business.