Integrity within yourself

Integrity... More powerful than a locomotive... and yet few choose to embrace it and harness its true power. This won't be a long post at all but it will have a powerful message it.

A friend of mine went to one of those "life coach" seminars and when they came back they had a lil bit of advice to share with me. They said that sometimes the issue that you have with other people is actually an issue that you have within yourself. Prime example: Integrity. I have a problem with people who don't seem to have a high level of integrity. People with low levels of integrity are NOTORIOUS for not keeping their word, lying and/or not telling the WHOLE truth, selling dreams (aka making empty promises), being deceitful (example: leading someone into a false assumption and not correcting them), etc. Now, those of you who know me know that I don't do ANY of those things. I ALWAYS keep my word to EVERYONE... except myself. You see, if I was true to myself, the people who DO have a problem being real wouldn't even be around me. They wouldn't be in my life to lie or deceive or make empty promises; especially not more than once. Do you understand?

I'll give you an example: a woman who says that she's tired of dealing with a man who puts everyone and everything else before her. She argues, fusses, and fights with him over the fact that he doesn't spend enough time with her. He apologizes and swears that he will do better, but within a few days, he's right back up to his same antics and she's mad again. Rinse and repeat. If she had a high level of integrity within herself, once she recognized a particular bad trait, said "I don't like (insert whatever pisses you off here)", and recognized (after a giving them time to do better) that they weren't going to change, she would have left that bad situation alone and begin searching again for friendships/relationships that don't posses the traits that she hates.

But no.

Her integrity is low, so she deals with it, calls it love/destiny, and he hurts her over and over again. Eventually she becomes damaged to the point where she utters those famous words "N*ggas aint sh*t" and sinks into a level of bitterness or defensiveness that only God Himself can break her out of. This scenario happens to some women. When it does, they often begin to exhibit the traits of the person who hurt them; becoming unreliable and dishonest. This leads to them hurting guys, who leave them and hurt girls, who leave and hurt other guys, who leave and hurt other girls... Rinse and repeat.

This horrible cycle goes on until God, or someone God sent comes along who is patient (or foolish), enough to deal with the broken pieces of the heart within the individual they are in a relationship with.

Where am I, you ask? I am asking God to put the right people around me who can handle the simple things I listed above and remove the people who cant get it right. And while many say that everyone deserves a second chance... It would be foolish to continue to think that way after chance number 8.

So examine yourself tonight. See what it is that needs work in your life after doing a lil introspection and begin making a conscious effort to work on it. Remember: No one is perfect...

Priestly Love

So the other day I read this article and it made me think a lil bit... It's a case where a priest basically got blacklisted by his church for getting caught on photograph kissing his girlfriend (who he later married). The line that got me thinking was where he said "There are so many homosexuals, both active and celibate, at all levels of clergy and Church hierarchy that the church would never be able to function if they were really to exclude all of them from ministry." The article also speaks of relationships, both homosexual and heterosexual, being prevalent; only becoming a problem once they are made public.

I'm really beginning to wonder what the issue is... I mean honestly, why won't the church allow them to date with the intentions of eventually getting married? Doesn't the bible (the book that they are supposed to be following) say that it "is better to marry than to burn?!" Being able to be a eunuch without being... well... you know... is something that I would say would have to be a special powered assignment and gift from God; a gift that few people have. And while I expect a priest to have discipline and self control, why is it that these men are required to hide their relationships when the bible itself makes room for heterosexual marriages (homosexuality is another, entirely different issue...) and you NEED to date before you get married? Without arranged marriages, it seems quite implausible.

I can understand, for the sake of reducing illegitimate children or disease, making someone of the clergy be chaste but, in a society where low self esteem and insecurity runs rampant, I don't see many significant others sitting well with hearing "Let's just keep our relationship between me and you. No one else needs to know about 'us', OK?"

To be completely honest, the church doesn't seem to deal with sexuality well at all. "Wait til marriage" will not suffice for an over-sexed, under-parented, rebellious teenager when dealing with the hormones that begin to rage after being bombarded with sexual images from today's media. I don't have any answers other than chaperoned dating when the kids are young and monitored media intake (extreme, I know). As far as the priest is concerned, black listing him for getting "caught" dating is absurd; it just seems a lil backwards to me to say you can marry but you can't date.

The "Good" Man

Last night I made a phone call to a friend of mine who I hadn't talked to all year. Somehow, during the conversation, I ended up talking on the phone with her friend who was in the car with her. This friend begin to give me what I like to call the "interview questions".

Nothing wrong with that...

The problem was the order of the questions that I got asked... I went a lil something like this:

Girl: Hey GM whassup? I'm (Insert random female name).

Me: Whas good?

Girl: You gotta hang out with us some more. I've never seen you with the rest of the crew. I heard you dont drink or go to clubs.

Me: Yeah, I ain't really a drinker and the club ain't all that fun if you dont drink.

Girl: Oh ok. Thas good that you do go to church? Are you a Christian?

Me: Yeah, I do and I am.

Girl: So are you gay?!

Me: (to myself first: Wait... WHAT?! Calm down. Laugh it off.) No, I'm not gay. Far from it.

Girl: Oh ok. Well you know I had to check before I gave you anymore compliments.

She proceeded to talk to her friend in the background saying "He ain't got no kids? (Right) Does he have a job? (Yes) Does he have a car? (Yes) SOMETHING gotta be wrong!!!" Then she starts back talking to me and continues the questions; these being a lil more "normal"; followed by "We gotta get up soon then."

END.

Yeah... OK. So the issue I have with this is, anybody who "wraps it up", doesn't drink, doesn't club, has a car and a job is gay and/or has a hidden disorder?! Why cant a guy just be responsible? I could possibly see her asking this if I was 35 or 40 years old, but I'm still young and this is the 3rd question that comes outta your mouth to a complete stranger? Has it really gotten that bad out here in these streets for Generation Y, aka the millenials?

I don't know...

On one side, I feel her a lil bit because a lot of people these days (both men and women) really ain't worth too much and responsible, respectable, people seem to be an anomaly. The other side of me has no words. Discuss.

Laws of Attraction

I remember coming across an article on yahoo a while back and it was talkin about what men and women find attractive in each other based on scientific studies. Now, I always have had my own interpretation of why and how women choose up and stuff like that but this article was very close to being slightly ridiculous. If I remember correctly, it said that women found men with more masculine facial characteristics to be great for short term relationships but men with more feminine characteristics such as larger lips and more rounded jaw bones where better targets for long term relationships. In the same breath it went on to say that the more masculine men were the choice for majority of the women to "mate" with because of the thought that they would have stronger jeans. So let me get this straight, get pregnant by Walker Texas Ranger and spend the rest of your time, after he gets done, looking for a male version of Martha Stuart to take care of you and somebody else's kids? I cant say that's cool... but that's what the studies say.

I went on to visit another website that deals with the same topic and this site took it a little further and went on to say that its about a person's genes moreso than what that person looks like. It even went on to talk about how a person is gonna be attracted to another person by their smell and also the by the amount their immune system differs. The idea is to find someone who has an immune system much different from yours in order to insure that your kid has the greatest chance for survival. Yeah..... All this stuff is basically happening without us even knowing its happening. I can only describe it as the reason a person may still be attached to somebody who treats them like dirt and they cant seem to leave them alone. Its either the immune system... or the (Insert sexual organ here).

The article did have some other points that I did agree with. For example, it talked about how the words we say don't really mean anything. You can beg, and beg, and beg but if they dont want you, they dont want you. Most of the communication is in the body language of the individual. Imitation is the greatest indicator of admiration. If that person mirrors your actions, more than likely they enjoy you as a person on some level; otherwise, they wouldn't act like you. It also went on to talk about how we usually want someone who looks and/or act like us, our parents or our siblings because that's what we grew up seeing. I thought it was crazy at first, then I thought about most of the women I had been in relationships with....

The last thing that stuck out in my mind was the fact that people are attracted to people who are symmetrical. Identifying symmetrical features as someone having good genes and someone who has asymmetrical features as a person who probably has weak genes or some "defects".

I cant say I co-sign everything in these articles but if they are true, it would explain some of my unexplainable episodes with certain females. It would also explain why its important for families to be just that - families; with both mother and father in the home. Otherwise, the child may not have a point of reference when looking for a potential mate. I don't know though. Being attracted to a mate by smell is a crazy thought and that whole immune system thing was just bananas. But, who knows, it could be true....

Transformation talks...

To be honest with you all... I aint never been fat a day in my life. But I came across this video and I listened to it. She has some very good advice; not just for fat people, but advice skinny people or ANYBODY with esteem issues can learn from. It was good "Transformation" advice... specifically coming from her experience of loosing weight and changing from a "big girl" to a "skinny girl". Peep the video below.

(Sidenote: she starts out sounding like she about to do some spoken word but she doesn't; it's only used to open up her video).