Does lying to ourselves about self-image really help?

We are constantly bombarded with images of how we should look and taunted by pills that make us think we should be happy all the time. At what point do we realize this is all a fantasy world? And we are lying to ourselves if we think we can be anyone but ourselves.

Each morning we drag ourselves out of bed and look into the mirror while we are mindlessly brushing our teeth. We squint and try to focus on the person in the mirror, but what and who is it that we see? A successful business person? A stay at home parent? Or someone who has built there self-image on lies?

It is easy to get caught in the photo shopped world that we live in, with TV and internet ads everywhere we look. They show us how we should look, act and feel. It is sickening how many people take this to heart.

I have never fit the mold for the body type of today’s media. I have had times in my life that I was just way too skinny. I would not eat for a days at time. I felt like eating was a waste of time, as if I was pissed off at my body because I had to do something every 5 hours. Eating just became something I only did when I got headaches or dizzy. This lead to me just becoming all bones. I guess in way I replaced food with cigarettes, which so many people do. There is something satisfying about being skinny and smoking. You can see that in most ads since the 40s. People are skinny and smoking the “right pack” of cigarettes. As if being skinny and smoking is the way it was done.

Even today's mold does not fit me. There is a beard tread that is going through the hipster mainstream right now. I have never been able to grow proper facial hair and really only need to shave about every 2 weeks. Does this make less of a man? Less of a person? I don’t think it does and neither should you. Despite my overly skinny body, once I quit smoking I gained quite a bit of weight. This is another extreme in the eyes of the media. I was no longer the cool skinny smoker kid. I was a fat smokeless adult. Being overweight has always been looked down on in the media image, especially for woman. The standard that we need to be is one sided and if we do not fit that mold we are looked at differently. When we eat, or don’t eat, we are judged by our body type.

So, how do we combat this image? How do we overcome what the media says about body type? Well most people just lie to themselves, but that needs to stop

We look in that mirror in the morning and do everything we to can draw away attention from flaws. Putting on and changing cloths to make us look slimmer or accent feature as to draw attention away from problem areas. In our heads we are laying on the lies about our image as if it is armor that will be stripped away by people throughout the day. Telling ourselves that if we only ate a little less, if we only drank a little less, or worked out a bit more we can be that person, but not today. Today we are still fighting, not living our own lives because our thoughts drift to the stranger from across the room. Is she looking at my attempt at facial hair?  Is he checking out my body or just staring at my stomach? Will she laugh at my blemished skin? Do they know what they are doing to me by staring?

The truth is, it really does not matter. I have accepted that fact that I am not at the right weight, and the fact that I am lazy about doing anything about it. I know that there are somethings about me I can change, others I cannot and so should you.

There are beautiful people everywhere in this world. With their hearts on their sleeve and those hearts are beating and yearning for acceptance that they don’t need. Being happy with yourself and body does not come from anyone else but yourself. You and I are the creators and inhabitants of our body and it is our canvas. We can paint this canvas, we can mold and shape it anyway we want, but we are still master pieces in our own right.

Your image should come from yourself, and not the little lies just to get by. The media and the strangers whose thought you think you can read do not matter. If a change needs to be made then it should be your choice, your decision and your motivation that makes it happen.

I am, who I am, and my body is not the only thing that make me, me. I am a master piece as a whole, and so are you.  

What has your father taught you?

      There are very few people outside of our parents that will have made such an impact on our lives. We seem to sometimes over look that fact, as we might still be growing into know-it-alls. Over time we may learn to listen and even appreciate them, and no one has an impact like that on me more than my father.

      Most people seem to have the opposite problem with parents, I, on the other hand only really grew up with my father and in some ways we grew up together. As he was 15 years old when I was born.

      With having a kid at such an early age, I am sure it was the most challenging things he has ever done in his life, even to this date. He had the know how and the will power to drop out of middle school during the summer of eighth grade and start working to support his new small family. I was too young to remember those days, but I use to hear stories about how hard it was on all of the family. They use to tell me a few Christmas I was the only one that would get presents as there was not enough money for anyone else. That always bothered me as most kids would still be getting presents in their late teens, but not my dad.

      As I got older and I started to see things a bit more as an adult. I understood the need for alone time, and why he would always just sit on the couch and tell me to let him relax before playing with me. I saw that construction job he took to support me was taking its toll on him, even though he was barely thirty. The work, plus an early onset of juvenile diabetes did not help.  It never stopped him though, even recently he said “I’d rather work and when I can’t work anymore I might as well be dead”. It does not seem my generation has that same kind of worth ethic. As if we have lost some of the grit that help make the generation before us able and willing to tackle anything.

      Despite the worth ethic differences my dad never wanted me to go into the construction field behind him. Always making me stay up late to study for the spelling-bee, which never helped. I would still get stuck on any word larger than 4 letters. He wanted to know that I would not put my body through the same hell in order to make a living, but I liked helping him. I was never cut out to move one hundred and forty pounds of liquid concrete over 2x4s in the mud at 6:30 in the morning using just  wheel barrel, but I tried. Each time I spilled it I had just seconds to grab a shovel and pick all up before it started to set up the yard of some stranger.I found a certain love for manual labor. I think it has to do with the same relaxation that you get from working out. Or maybe at the end of the day you can look down at your work and see you have made a difference. You can review your work and people will admire or even live in what you have built. There are very few professions in the world that can give that kind of satisfaction.

      Despite his best effects I still dropped out of high school and ended up working in a factory with him. Each day we had the floor plans to make a new prefabricated house. Each section was reasonable for putting together a certain room, or hall way. I however was not skilled enough for even hammering nails apparently. I had to hammer mesh tacks for the roof support beams. It was hot, and there was no AC in that metal warehouse. No one cared about anything but getting paid and smoking, or in the case of the supervisor, doing cocaine off of his desk. Either way, at the end of each day I was tired, sore and well...wanted a cigarette and my pay check, but I still knew I helped build someone’s house. After a short time though I was cut from the line, I supposedly spent too much time drinking water. Not sure what I was thinking trying to stat hydrated going manual labor in 90 degree weather. They kept my dad on though.

      After some time from going from dead end security job to security job I had a sit down conversation with my dad about what I want to do with my life. I had always had a knack for fixing computers since I was fourteen years old. We threw around some ideas and despite my better judgement we decided to make my hobby, my job. I ended up starting out a community college which I thought was a waste of time, but my dad never saw it that way. I guess any college seemed like a good one from his point-of-view. I worked through it until I dropped out from school yet again. He was disappointed although he would never had told me that out right. He always seems to want to say something direct but it is like he knew he had never been in my shoes. Despite that, he understood what it meant to be ageing and no chance of retirement so he would still press.

      I eventually got into a university and started to make real progress there. Faltering before it was time for exams and my dad trying to talk me down into taking one question at a time. Even though he had no idea what I was learning about. The way he speaks about complicated topics has always been a sort of comfort for me. That each time life gives you shit the only thing you can do is press on, and that is what he would do, except he used his back in summer heat. I can see each sun bleach spot on him where is skin has just given on pigmentation completely.

     With his consistent ear to vent to about subjects above his head I was able to push through my degree. I did not even want to walk down the aisle. I thought it was so stupid to go up there and be handed a blank paper and wait 3 weeks for the real thing to get to your house. When you opened it, it is just be a consent reminder of looming debt pressed on cheap leather. He pressed and I caved, even buying the pre-walk pictures so he could brag to his friends.

     Now that I have come full circle and have a kid of my own I cannot look at him the same way. I cannot understand how he did it alone, never taking child support until 2 years before I was eighteen. Just the seer ability to be standing in the fire day-by-day and not crack. I even catch my safe saying the same thing to my son he used to say to me when he had enough. Phrases like “Don’t put that rock in back in your mouth or I’mma pop you” or the legendary “You want me to give you something to cry about?”

     I employ all of you to take this time, to look back at what you had, and who you were and try to see the difference your father has made in your life. Even if he was not around, or was a deadbeat, you may not have learned what do in life from him, but you sure learned what not to do.

 
What did your father teach you?



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Why do we have fake arguments in our heads?

      Have you ever been you are running through a fake argument in your head someone? Or Are tired of someone at work or home and fantasize about what a “throw down” argument would be like with them? After your fake argument, were you pissed? Relieved?

      The world we live in seems to draw out the worst in people, yet it is looked down upon to call people on their bullshit. As if it is acceptable to act out, but not okay to react to it. I am not sure when this started to be the case. It has plagued us in the real world for some time and the only place this is does not apply is the internet.

      The internet is where everyone is fearless.  There is a level hatred unrivaled on the web. Where people can say the most nasty and terrible things imaginable to people, or groups of people, and it has almost become acceptable to do so. If you go to a YouTube channel or a Facebook post, people will say whatever it is they want, but I doubt that is true in real life. The internet is a vast place for people to just vent on one another. It allows anyone, regardless of age or maturity level to put out there opinions and with little-to-no consequences. With no real threat of penalty, people are just going off at the mouth on one another in a way never foreseen.

      This “no fear internet” phenomenon I believe has spread into the real world in the form of the “fake argument." We fantasized in our heads about what we would say to someone or try to script out an argument in our favor. Driving in the car or taking a shower we mold and build ourselves up for the “big throw down.” We plot and try and predict what the other person will say, or how they will counter. Sometimes even working ourselves up and getting mad at the other person for thinking they might say something. We get emotionally tangled into a fight that has never happen, nor does the other person even know about it.

      This can work us up and make us even angrier at the person who has said nothing to us. So why do we do it? Is it because we do not have guts to say some of these things in person? It is a way to vent without getting in trouble? Or it is a method of preparing for something that we have been taught to avoid? 

      I think it is a little of all the above. Most people seem to avoid conflict at all costs and this method of being able to try and work out problems in our heads helps understand the situation. It allows us to try and look at things from the other person’s point-of-view. Maybe this process helps them realize that they are not one hundred percent in the wrong. Or that they are taking full advance of someone and something needs to be said. 

      There becomes a certain point that we all come to where we need to get out what is on our mind. The fake argument allows us to go through what it is we need to say. Instead of going in to argument all worked up and not having a method of delivering the point. This will also allow us to make sure that we hit all the issues, that we are having and what is it we want to happen or need to change.

           As annoying as this can be, I think it is a health way to get things out into the open in your own mind before going off half-cocked.


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Is Game of Thrones an original idea?

Often times TV shows tend to try and paint a picture that somehow links up with the real world. Creating situations that you might come across on a daily or maybe even a yearly basis. That somehow our normal lives can cross paths with our entertainment…Although I am not sure this is ever the case in Game of Thrones.

                It is no secret that Game of Thrones is one of the most popular TV shows out right now. What is it about this fictional? Why can we not seem to get enough? I believe it is because it is not like the real world, that it is not the same old situations told over and over again. It is fresh.

The interesting thing about it is that there are hard core fans of the books and that of the shows, but as we know they do not always clash that well together later in the TV show series. One has to wonder why the show chose to stray away from the books. Is it that the books could not keep up with the thirst of the fans, or was it that the social media has changed the way that we now view movies and TV?

Do we, the people, have the power to stop a TV show from killing off a character? or making an event be pulled from the recording? Are we that far involved that we can affect not only the bottom dollar but the fates of our favorite characters?

I think we do have this power and I think that social media and blogs like this one are the one holding the cards in the final outcome. We have become not only consumers of products and services but in the making of our own entertainment. We just have to have our way no matter what the circumstance are, or who it effects.

This makes me think that we are missing out on true entertainment and the production companies bowing down to the mighty media will not be a good thing for show business. We can already see this in the movies that are coming out now days. They just keep remaking the same movies over and over again. Some of the most recent ones are Point Break, Poltergeist and Charlie and Mad Max to name a few. Where have all the original ideas gone?

There is such a vast well that we can draw as a creative yet destructive species. There is potential in everyone and there are ideas that if brought to life just will not die. I think we see this most in the Indie world. Indie music and movies are becoming more and more part of the norm. We also see this products in like the craft beer and organic foods. There is a movement away the social and cooperate owned media.

That is where Game of Thrones lies, in the feasting and itchy underworld that is an “original Idea”. It dares to go against the norm so much it does not even follow the books it was based off of. It employs mostly actors that are not from the United States and hires ex-porn stars to do nude scenes. How could it not be one of the most unique shows on TV?

Other shows and productions companies should take note from this and the Indie industries and realize that people want they have always wanted…what they don’t have.

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