already failed

so my intention was to quit christmas consumerism and I have already failed in the essence of completely quitting. without my knowledge I was put into one of my jobs "seceret pals" it is the equivalent to secret santa and goes every week until christmas break. so I have already had to make purchases in the spirit of christmas. This is even before Halloween. Oh well, I'm still sticking to it the best I can.

don't lie

in chatting with a coworker and friend the other day we came to the conclusion that adults are really just a bunch of hypocrites. This all started how we were talking about how wouldn't it be wonderful if we were all as honest as children. Kids just say thing without any ego, any worry of how it is interpreted, and any worry of sparing feelings.

How wonderful would it be if we all were so bluntly honest. People would express their true feelings and call other people on their shit much more often.

as good as that would be I thought about how we lie and are hypocrites. One lesson fed to kids over and over and over again is the importance of honesty. I am one of the most honest people I know but I certainly lie from time to time like anyone else. So here we have a situation where the adults and grown-ups of the world are spouting the importance of honesty and punishing dishonesty when we ourselves go through the world lying frequently.

teen challenge

the other day I had a conversation with a teenage high school student. she was telling me that she wanted to try out for her school cheer leading team but was hesitant because was worried it would be full of nerds. long story short the conversation boiled down to me challenging her as to what exactly constitutes a nerd. I give her credit for being able to honestly answer me despite some hesitation. I love challenging people on their thoughts. Many times I challenge others on their beliefs they tend to tell me to shut up, or ask me why I'm asking, or tell me I'm being weird. When I hear these replies it typically translates to "your making me uncomfortable or I'm ashamed of my answer or I don't want to tell you" This particular young lady was able to verbalize what she thought even though she was not too pleased with her answer. So I thought to myself: if someone asked you a challenging question about your beliefs would you be able to answer it out loud? A question about our personnel prejudice would be a good example.
It's worth thinking about and I'm not sure many of us are able to answer the tough questions. could you?