Real Girls Aren’t Perfect & Perfect Girls Aren’t Real.

I was reading Coloured In Sepia’s post on Honest writing . It got me thinking how much we polish up each of our posts on our blogs. Rather than saying outright what we truly feel we mask it or we put a different spin on it so our inner feelings aren’t overtly exposed.

I guess sometimes it is hard to be honest because people are reading what we write and no one wants to look bad in front of others. We always try to polish things over to create good exposure for ourselves. I guess it’s a pride thing. How many hits did you get on your site today? Just because you do or don’t have many viewers accessing your site does not have an effect on your reader’s accessibility to your information,  your emotions and your expressions… or does it?

When typing up a post we ask ourselves. What will sell? What will be interesting for someone else to read? We tend to play up the situation in an effort to employ a more impressive vocabulary or display a more exciting life or informed view on our surroundings. We polish things up. Tie up those loose ends and short wired feelings we haven’t yet got a grip on ourselves, and insteas hand over only the stable information. It barely scratches the surface of what is really going on, rendering our posts showy, but shallow and superficial.

Honestly what can people learn from polished feelings? We see it in the movies, we’re sold it in the magazines and many people adopt these feelings for themselves. When we are in a time of need and are searching for something to relate to, can we really relate to that polished up chick flick, where the girl has perfect hair and the guy is flawless? Can we really relate to that laboured over love songs currently spinning on the radio?

No. Why not? Because they are polished. They are shallow in comparison with our deepest  emotions, totally artificial. They are carefully constructed and edited so as to convey only the surface and to tie all the loose ends together.

The truth is in each of our lives there are many said ‘loose ends’. We are charged with countless short wires that conk out at all the wrong times and we are constantly finding unnoticed emotions that incessantly gurgle up our chests until tears fall from our eyes. Our life cannot be summed up in an autobiography for we do not know every detail ourselves. Our emotions cannot be conveyed in poetry for whose feelings can truly slot into the careful rhythmic boxes required? No one’s feelings can.

The thing is we always want people to think we have our life all together. We adopt a certain persona when beneath our skin numerous emotions are curdling into uncontrollable storms.

Ever think perhaps people don’t want a polished view of you? Ever think perhaps people are sick and tired of the act you put on? Ever wonder if someone is wanting you get beneath the surface and know the real you?

Our blogs give us the perfect opportunity to do this! None of us are professionals, waged for selling a polished, false reality. For once there are no boundaries! We can here express what ever we want. We just have to realise that our readers aren’t reading to pass judgement. There is no pass or fail. Our job should be to provide honest reading that others can relate to. Since there is so much tumult media clobbering us with trash, we should take it upon ourselves to provide a sanctuary for others like us. Others who need somewhere to escape and be fed the truth.

You can’t learn from lies. We learn from the truth. From honest writing. From mistakes. Because honestly, each of us are only human. We just have to learn to accept it and use it.

P.s Isn’t the whole point of being Christian that we have outwardly confessed our utter imperfection? Then why do we incessantly strive to convey anything otherwise? Let’s stick to what we know is truth!

Hiking Is Refining

While hiking this weekend, I had a thought.

Well it was actually when I got back and I could finally brush my teeth. There wasn’t a creek like last time and I wasn’t wasting valuable drinking water to brush my teeth. Well it was that and that I kind of forgot until I was already hiking. (But shhhhh)

Anyway, when I go a day without brushing my teeth they usually go really gross. They feel feral, they look feral and they just are feral. But when I got home today and looked at myself in the mirror I saw my teeth were not of the hideous shade I’d been dreading, they were actually whiter and all-round pearlier than usual.

I wondered how this could be until I recalled the types of food I’d been eating. Healthy, nutritious food. Carrot anyone? I then realised that my teeth must have been ok because unlike usual I hadn’t been loading them up with sugar. This hike, where I consumed good food meant a break for my teeth. It showed me what they could really be like if I listened to my dentist and avoided sugar.

And then I realised this is just like life aswell. When you’re out there hiking in the bush, you’re not checking your Facebook every five minutes. You’re not bothered by meaningless causes and you’re not bombarded with the media and its warped ideas of truth. You are however, out there in you’re old clothes, not concerned with the way that you look. Instead of magazine covers you are presented with God’s marvelous creation. Rather than watching movies you gaze, amazed at the spectacular scenery.

In a sense you’ve been refined. All that meaningless trash that weighs down your life has been stripped away and you can just be the you you were meant to be, rather than yet another social construct.

Can you see it? That deep down we are more? That we’re not even who we think we are, that’s just who we’re told we are?

Media Makes Me Love

I reckon statistics would say that 99.9 % of songs ever written talk about love. Sure there are some looking at it in a positive light and others in the negative but they’re based on the same thing.

Love. Huh. It’s seems so familiar yet so foreign both at the same time. We are bombarded with the media’s version of it but we’re not so sure that’s what we want. So we look a bit further and dig a bit deeper in search of this mystery they call love.

I was thinking… since we are constantly hearing this vast array of songs on the radio, on movies, on our iPod, at the shops, in a friend’s car… wherever, how do we respond? Why is it that songs that sing about what should be a cliché topic sell for millions?

I think it’s because we can relate to it. We take on the lyrics and put our own spin on it. Somehow these songs seem to fit in perfectly with our life.

But I was thinking… when these tunes are playing do they make you think of someone else? Does every song seem to be about them? With this music bombarding us, does that make it impossible for you to get them out of your mind?

Yeah. That’s what I thought.