Moving On

In moving on, the sojourner keeps in his backpack only the essentials that made his life meaningful in the past, the joys that are light, and the memoirs of happiness. With someone else, he takes the journey anew mapping out all that is good before, what is better for now and what will do best in the future. He may take the new journey with someone from his past or a new one in his present.

We are sojourners in this world. We all walk in this life for someone we love or to find someone to love. We move from one place to another. We meet people as we journey. There are those who journey alone, while others want some company. Even those who journey alone later on gets weary and finds the need for a company. The truth is, we all need someone in our sojourns.

The decision to move on is a tough one. It is difficult because we would like to linger on the past, even if it is a hurtful past. It is because that past has become our comfort zone and it is inconvenient for us to leave that past behind. In that past, there are people we loved who we learned to endure because we love them. But since, we are no longer growing with them, we feel it is better to move on in separate ways. Our desire to keep that past prevents us from moving on to another state of life.

Untying ties with people of one's past does not mean condemning them, but merely redefining our relationship with them. Our good memories with them must not be repressed by the hurts, neither should we ignore them nor regard that they never existed at all in our lives. Even those that hurt us the most, have made our lives meaningful for us to be better in the light, against their shadow character. Sure we had joys with them and happy moments to remember aswell. Like in leaving a house as guests, we have to be polite in finding our exit.

It would do the sojourner better to fit into his backpack, very few essentials, the smallest of all survival kits including a map of dreams, a small journal of good memories, a book to go by with life, a pill of courage, a bottle of passion to succeed, a cookie of openness for new experiences, a nutribar of concern to share with another, a pen filled with optimism, a light of hope, a blanket of warmth, a mobile communication to stay connected with love ones, and a huge space to pack in all other things new that can be acquired from moving on.

We can not carry luggage as we sojourn. We need to pack our things light and taking with us only the essential. The most important of which is a map of where we want to go, a map of who we are and who we want to be. So in the completion of a recent journey, we look forward to something else without losing our memory of our life before, while all the good is packed on our back. But if we carry a luggage, we can not move on and enjoy another journey.

Mapping our journey is planning for our new life. That is thinking of our present and looking forward to a future. As sojourners, we can do this with someone else, but the decision should remain ours to make. We can seek a guide whom we can ask to be with us, but if we only see a company as guide, that person can not be with us for a long time we might need them the most. A guide remains in his post for other travellers.

But if we find another sojourner along the way, who shares the same map with us, we can find the journey more enjoyable with that company. A companion in the journey must be necessary, especially if we are trekking trails that we have never been to. With that companion, we can share our fears, our sighs, our worries, and we can even lean our tired backs on each other. That companion has to be trustworthy, caring, enduring, concerned, feeling, understanding, talking and really listening.

With a companion sharing the same map, wanting the same direction, it is never an issue to get lost in the journey or to be delayed in the journey. For all we know that is what a journey is for, finding someone to enjoy where and when we find a worthy companion for each other. That in end we may not regretfully ask, "why have we been looking out for things from somewhere else, when what we really wanted and needed is right here, right now, right where we are?"

The Pathological Liar

A lie is a means of deception and a defense mechanism. There is a moral consequence to telling lies and some social repercussions. Because of the implications of lies one is pushed to do it to save face while the other is prevented from committing one, also to save face. A lie is supposed to be not of the truth, not necessarily the opposite of truth.

To keep something from being known is not telling a lie, but merely keeping something in secret. One can't force someone to tell something openly when there are concerns in divulging such information or knowledge. Telling of falsity or fabricating information are direct lies. While we have the liberty to express our ideas, we also extend the same liberty to telling lies.

Deliberate lies can become habitual lies. For a liar whose habit is speaking of falsehood, lies become their realities where they find comfort and convenience than facing the truth and speaking of truth. People of pretense are liars. Hypocrites are liars to their social nature. Liars are treacherous people and they have little regard for others than their selves whom they are never able to understand anymore.

Lying is a learned behavior that is observed in social interactions. To have sense of security and belongingness, some people resort to please others with lies. Like schmoozers who will try to please someone else in stature and with high influence to others, they can lick your ass to tell you what you want to hear and agree on everything you say. They will weave stories to tell you but never live those stories for you to really see.

Lying results from anxieties, and it goes with an immediate feeling of false certainty that it might work out. Those who suffered from alienation and exclusion tend to develop the habit of lying to appease and please others. Those who had experienced strong social rejections create a world of lies to make others believe some obscured realities. They are afraid to lose face, to be left out, to be casted out, to accept their situation and to let others accept their truths.

Lying works out on several tries, but when the other party begins to sense the inconsistencies in the weaved stories, a gap in the relationship will soon break. The farther the gap becomes, the clearer the lie is seen. Lying is also purposive, it is intentional, but it works one-way, like a win-lose situation. The liar tries to win others but in the end when the lie is brought to light, the liar loses.

Extreme lying has association to neuroticism and to some fixations. One who may be so obsessed of beauty, lies in vanity and bodifications. One who has been so obsessed of material things feels deprivation in the meager things he has, so he lies through acquisition of others'things by borrowing or stealing. One who can not acknowledge his own weakness cheats. The many social deviances or behavioral aggressions have links to lying.

There are non-verbal cues to lying, but it takes an expert in kinesics and semiotics to understand the relationship between the words and the actions' meanings. They also vary culturally. Consistency is a prime suspect to determine lies, but one should be very careful to see the erratic pattern in the stories told in various episodes of the social interaction. It probably takes the mastery of understanding social interactions and their implications to the content and context of communication to immediately detect lying.

What is immediate to common sense is that a liar is in a pathetic situation. A pathological liar who lives a world of lies is sick, socially and psychologically. Is there an over the counter drug to cure the said illness? I guess, if lies are not of the thruth, and truth is light, bringing the lie into the truth puts the liar in the light. Light heals and it does not burden. Everything that is in the light rejoices in the truth. The truth may hurt, but it never kills unlike that of the lie.

A Post for G

I do want to write about you and for you in this blog. For several times I've attempted so, but I turned out leaving the page for the post blank, if not unfinished and I had to begin again from scratch. I thought, "I was keeping this blog for various readers, and I did not start this for you". So should I be writing for you and about you?

We tick. We manage to keep on even if our working timezones are different. Your disturbing text messages put smile on my face and I get so excited to check my inbox again and again. My inbox has been filled with your messages, so I had to delete all files from the storage, but I can't erase you in my head, as my hearts speaks more of you often, and I am needing you all the more.

So short a time for us to have known each other, and I know there are many other things that we will discover together. If not for that rain, we would have not been soaked in intimate passion and we would have not been looking forward to the coming days that we will spend together, rain or shine no longer matters. Yet, we are now weaving dreams together.

You were lonely then as you told me, I was lonesome too. I have not been tired of waiting for someone I kept my heart for in the last six years. You were in love with someone else for nine years until your ways separated. Suddenly, the chemistry between us worked like potion to strike me into thinking about you. Like you, I find myself spacing out when I am not busy, merely thinking of you.

We were just so connected, then we began to be expressing how we care for each other. Like kids, we did not understand what was going on, but we just keep on going because the feeling is mutual and we reciprocate our emotional needs. We feel a sense of security and belongingness when from each other, even if we don't spend much time together. You say you are happy with me around, and I feel the same way.

We could stay together all night, not wanting tomorrow to come. We would steal a kiss as we part ways, and our hands could find their ways to hold each other tight. We tried things we've probably not done before to surprise each other. We never failed in sharing the joy we feel, even the little times we stay together.

You understood, we had so many things in common. I said, we should be complementing each other even if there were so many differences that we have. Easily, we developed that trust, respect and mutual understanding. So, you included me in your dreams you want to happen, and you became a part of my life.You said, you found a life-coach in me, while I see a life-partner in you.

Are we friends or are we lovers, to care for each other this much? Is caring for each other so different from loving each other, when we can't even define what love is? Why then do we feel a need to be together, when we have no formal arrangements of what we are? I don't understand, you can't explain it to me either.

All I know is that sometimes in life we do not have a need to understand or explain things. The best of life comes when we get to enjoy and appreciate the feeling we have for someone we care for. No one enjoys the thrills and joys of a roller coaster ride by theorizing on G-force and pneumatics to operate the machine, while on it. We just have to take the ride and so enjoy the feeling, till we are there.