(Now edited of late night typo’s)
Honesty and Integrity, what a hell of a concept, in theory they seem so noble, “the right thing to do”
And then there is compassion and kindness, which also in concept seem so to be, “the right thing to be” (please excuse the mixed up tenses)
But sometimes, maybe even often times, Honesty and Integrity do not mix very well with Compassion and Kindness, surely this is why we speak of “brutal honesty”
Recently an individual joined the team at Uber Haus, a man with a bad luck story full of promised opportunities that were blocked by forces larger than he was. I felt sorry for him, I wanted to help and in so doing admitted him into a sacred circle of friends, and… well let’s just say that besides a total lack of basic social skills, the bottle of Viceroy (brandy) that he commandeered from me stripped away all of his “Christianity” laying bare a VERY ugly soul.
Last Friday evening was the next gathering of the sacred circle and I was put into the uncomfortable situation of excluding him. For all of his drunken unpleasantness, his sober pathos still pained me. The duality of life, the yin and the yang, the two wolves inside each of us; which to feed?
I know the answer, “above all else be true unto yourself!”, but damn, that can be difficult, it can be difficult to say to someone; “no! I do not want you to sit with us and spoil our evening”, “no, I can see that you are infatuated with me, but I find you repulsive, and do not wish to share my body with you” or “I love you, but you not yet ready and I wish to have a life in the mean time because there are no promises”
I love my rural home, I love my friends and family there, but I find myself lonely at times, lonely for intellectual stimulation, and in this way at the very least my months in Durban have been good for me, besides my family here, I have grown very close to three people, Bryann, Dave and Warwick, Warwick and I had the opportunity this past week to spend a lot of time in each others company on various sites, and he has remarked (more than once) on how hard I am on myself, funny thing that, because I had never noticed it before, but he asked me a pointed question “would you be friends with someone who spoke to you the way you speak to yourself?”
I guess not!
So if I was a GOOD friend to myself, how would I treat myself differently? What advice would I give myself? What opinion would I have of the people I associate with? Would I approve of my love interests? Would I encourage myself to be more honest? To have more integrity? Or would I urge myself to be more kind? To have more compassion?
Much room for thought there…
Go Forth and be awesome
All My Love
Kim
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