I Didn't Think That Through

Honesty is a strange thing, it's a quality most people profess to have, but that can be hard to judge.  Moreover it's a quality that most people profess to desire in others, but again, whether that profession is actually honest in and of itself is equally hard to judge. 

When you choose to share what you think and what you feel with the entire world, there is a desire to be honest, open, and frank about what you think and what you feel.  However, the truth is, most people don't want you to do that.  Most people have an established set of beliefs that they have come to as the culmination of the life they have lived up until that point.  It is incredibly rare to find someone who is actually willing to entertain your point of view when it has the potential to invalidate everything they think they know or think they have figured out, about the world.  The truth is most people just want you to stroke their ego.  Most people want you to take what they already believe, and reiterate it for their own validation.  Most people aren't willing to even entertain the possibility that they might be wrong.

Most people.

Some people don't have this mentality, but in my experience, these people are rare.  I have had the pleasure of meeting a few in my time, and of those they became the closest friends with the deepest connections I have made, they have also become those most remarkably resilient to differences in opinion, even to the point of fundamental disagreement that debate is held on a purely intellectual level without ever affecting the emotional connection.  This is something I would like to have with everyone in my life but I know that desire is unrealistic and on top of that I also know that there is truth in the idea that you really don't want to know what other people are thinking.

I write this blog, as I have said before, mainly as a form of self-therapy.  It lets me process many things that are rolling around in my head.  It lets me give form and structure and lets me take ideas that are persistently annoying me, write them down, and then let it go and move on with my life.  What I find fascinating is the idea that other people actually want to read what is written here.  That's not meant as a judgement of anyone reading this post, after all the reason it's here rather than just being saved on a hard drive somewhere is so that you can read it in the first place.  What I mean instead, is that although this is self-therapy and although I do occasionally come back and read some posts, for the most part I do not.  There are a plethora of posts on here now from a wide range of topics that I can't even recall with clarity - I rely on my own recollection when writing to jog my memory and look back to ensure I don't write about something I have already written about. 

The fact that I can't even recall everything I have written on here just highlights something that is a peculiarity when it comes to the internet - that is the relevance of time.  I don't mean in an Einsteinian sense, but rather, that content is often written in the context of the mindset I had in the moment of writing, which rarely persists longer than a few hours at most.  Who I am today is not the person I was a week ago and is not the person I will be a week from now.  Each post gives an insight into my mind, that much is clear, but it only ever gives you an insight into my mind at that point in time, it's not that easy to extrapolate that insight and form a more three-dimensional impression.

This isn't the post I was meant to publish today.  In truth there are quite a few posts scheduled to publish on here [over 150 at present] some of them were written many months ago, some were written more recently.  I have taken to reading some posts the day before they are set to publish, usually just for the sake of proofing them but sometimes out of genuine interest of the mindset they provide an insight into.  The post that was scheduled to publish today has been deleted, the reason being it was a topic that I had not thought through, and in the time that has passed since it was written, a number of real world events have happened that were far too close to what I had written - make of that what you will, clairvoyance is a rabbit hole you should dive into some day, what you find when you do is fascinating.  Regardless, given the real world events that have happened I decided to delete the post.

In life when people ask you to tell them the truth, you have to weigh up both sides before you answer, not only whether you actually want to be honest, but whether or not you think the other person can handle it.  Sometimes it can be crystal clear to you before you say a word that they will not be receptive to what you have to say, so in truth, why bother?