Can I see your soul please?

So it's late and I'm tired. Somehow this seems to drive me to blog more than to sleep. No wonder I don't sleep enough. Hmm drawing a blank. Yet, I feel a certain sense of obligation to try to write a thoughtful post. After all, it has been over a week and my counter did just pass 1,000. Both good reasons to blog. Reasons, but not topics.

I think I'll have to turn to something I think about a lot, honesty. Today at work, I overheard some girls talking about how great conversation is and one of them remarked, "I think it's sad that we hold back being completely honesty from everyone, but our closest friends." That was a paraphrase, but pretty close. At this point, I really wanted to join in the conversation, but I was working at the time and felt like taking time to talk would be dishonest by getting paid to talk. I guess for me it was really comforting to know that there are other people who think about this stuff. They even talked about treating everyone like a person, at the bank, grocery store, wherever. It was one of those moments that I was glad to be part of the human race. It reminded me that human kindness is alive and well. I really wanted to start talking to them about the ideas they presented. It seems like conversations of that sort don't exactly pop up every day. I blame much of my antisocial/elitist behavior in high school on a distinct lack of such conversations. I just wasn't much interested in "small talk." My tolerance for small talk has increased over time, but I'd still rather talk about what makes people tick over the latest movie.

On a related note, I've realized I could never marry someone who is a poor conversationalist. It's funny that reminds me of a conversation when a girl told me that one of the most attractive qualities a guy can have is confidence. I've thought about that a fair amount and it seems to explain that age-old question I've had of "Why do nice girls go out with jerks?" It would seem that part of the answer is that the jerks are at least confident enough to ask the girl out, whereas the shy, nice guys often don't. In high school I didn't date much. I didn't think that girls were interested and I didn't want them to go out with me if they didn't want to. I didn't think for a second about the thousands of years of tradition that state it is the male's role to initiate contact. Add this to the fact that I hated small talk, which meant in high school I didn't talk much, and suddenly my high school experience makes sense. I was always waiting for someone else to show interest in me; I'd respond when they did. Incidentally, several did that I was too daft to realize at the time. What a horrible way to live...just waiting to be loved. I know now that many if not most people live like I did. Waiting, crying, bleeding, and dying for love. My friends, I don't pretend to have all the answers, but this much I do know: if we want love we have to give love. It means letting people see who we really are. No bravado, no sarcasm, no games.