Living Rarefied

I saw Wedding Crashers last night… Funny movie, although it got me thinking about telling the truth and if it is always the best thing to do…

It seems like in every movie that has a romantic twist to it involves some huge lies in order to get the girl and in the end the guy has some epiphany that he has to tell the truth. The funny thing is, everytime the guy comes clean, he gets the gal… Take Will Smith in Hitch for example, he didn't lie, but witheld the truth from Eva Mendes' character.

I am posing this as an open-ended question/dialog because I don't believe for a second that this would ever happen in our "real life". I think we are being trained by movies/tv to think it would work and therefore is ok.

I may have used to live along the lines of John and Jeremy of Wedding Crashers, not intentionally, but I would keep parts of me away from people I meet, girls I went out with, tried to be the one they wanted me to be… The funny guy, the soft guy, the dick, the athlete, the loud guy, the quiet guy, the party animal, the geek… Ok so the geek was never a trait somebody was looking for.

But guess what, I am all of those… Sometimes at the same time, sometimes over the span of a week or month… But I chose to accentuate one of them at a time and hide the others. I could do that for a few weeks, then truth would come out and I wasn't the animal they thought they had found, they found I had some limits, they found I can be an ass at sometimes, they found that sometimes my geekness comes out when you least expect it.

Lately I have tried to be open with myself and others and not try to hide parts of me that aren't "pleasing"…

• I may joke and make light about being a geek and playing with computers, but reality is at home I have a desk that looks like Mission Control at NASA. Its open there for everybody who comes over to see. I AM A GEEK.
• I have a faith that I am not afraid to talk about. I used to hide it from people because it wasn't in line with my actions, but as I have talked about it, shown it.. My actions have come in line with my faith.
• I am a funny guy, I have realised where my humor lies and how it comes out. I don't change that on a per-audience basis. That is when I became unfunny. I have my humor and few people understand it, and thats ok, because those are the people who I want to enjoy my humor… Its not for everybody…
• Sometimes its good to be quiet and sometimes its good to be loud.. When I used to put on the act of a shy/quiet guy to get the soft image out there, maybe we would go to a Gopher hockey game and maybe Don Adam is refereeing. Perhaps they are playing Denver (Adam's favorite team) and maybe there are a few questionable calls. No matter what act I was trying to put on, the real me comes out and I am screaming at Don Adam. Not cause I hate him, but because of my passion for Gopher hockey. And if you are passionate about something, its hard to be quiet about it…
• You may find it unthinkable that I played "the dick" when I was hanging out with a girl in college.. But I did.. Started as a joke, but I got such a reaction out of it, I just went with it…

Which brings me to why I put my blog URL in my email signatures… I don't say "GO HERE" but I put it there for those who are curious to learn more about me. Its who I am and who I am going to be, I am not going to modify myself so that somebody will like me, becuase I will then be hiding a characteristic of myself that somebody else enjoys about me.

n interesting piece of putting my URL in my email signature. I was on the golf course about a month ago. Telling my Dad a story I hadn't shared with him. He said, "oh yeah, I remember reading about that on your blog." I heard the record skip in my head and the music stopped… I was thinking wow, my Dad reads my blog and sees things I have never talked about before… But then I remembered, its my Dad, if anybody should know whats going on in my life, he should…

So is it ever permissible to lie or withhold the truth? Even if it is for the better for another person… Maybe it is something, some information you have but shouldn't have.. And if you tell her, it will crush her and make her wonder why you had the information before her. If you dont tell her, it will eventually get back to her that you knew and didn't tell her.

I have found it is better to be upfront and honest with information ever if it means a slight kick to the midsection… Its a lot better than getting a severe beatdown later on and easier to recover from and move ahead with your relationship…

Ethan testing