Appearance and Reality

             All people have a contrast between how they appear to be and the reality of their true nature and feelings. A facade is constructed by everyone for all others to see so that the vulnerable substance which lies beneath remains safe, and guarded, and secret from the rest of the world. We do this to protect ourselves from outside danger which might harm the what we declare to ourselves to be highly personal. Things such as likes, wants, and needs are all to often assumed to be too dangerous to share, and all to often receive negativity when one brave enough shares them. If no one knows of what you truly want or feel inside, then people are less likely to make you feel negatively for it. It is at heart a rather cowardly thing. This cycle of lies and dishonest appearances. Almost none of us has the courage or quality of character to be true and honest in all we do and say. Its sad, to be truthful, when you think about what the quality of life could be. How devoid of guilt embarrassment, discouragement, fear, and countless other undesirable feelings we all could be. It is not hard to imagine the difference in quality of life there would be if all were a little more brave, and all a little more willing to receive the bravery and understand it.
             
            It would seem though that if human society could have been different it would be. But it isn't. Even with one hundred thousand years of human kind on this earth( that being the smaller estimate of the time modern humans have been around)  we have failed to create a sustainable way of life and interaction with our fellow people. Our kind is steeped in a sadomasochistic obsession over wealth, power, and social status. Society is rife with greed and dangerous self interest. Unfortunately all of the bad we perform is innate to human nature and our workings. We just can seem to help ourselves. We are doomed by our simultaneous unsustainable growth and lack of will to change course swiftly enough.The number one threat to humans is humans themselves. We are our own worst enemies. Humans create all their own tragedy for themselves and each other through blatant disregard for basic well being and rational thinking. Too few take time to give thought to the inherent dysfunctional nature of our system of living, and those who do either don't spread the thinking or do so ineffectively. It would truly seem as if we as people are collectively a rotten species wrought with mostly destructive tendencies.

             We as a people though are not bereft of good will, or kindness, or altruism. For just as it is in our nature to destroy and seek after things in selfishness and reckless abandon, so it is simultaneously in our nature to love and care and respect one another. We have love and altruism at our very cores. Like a warm coal at our center all our true feelings of care and goodwill sit, often dormant or seldom tapped. Yet when we touch and embrace the warmth of human decency and mutual respect we give off just a flash and a glimmer of what more there could be. We get a taste of what it is to be humans of a higher caliber. We feel proud of ourselves and our successful attempt to grasp for more then what is directly wanted by ourselves. We give birth to a rendition of greed which yearns not for wealth or power, but for the feeling of being understood and the ability to give that feeling  to others. All we really want is to be understood, and through being understood, to be loved, and in turn give love back through initiating with someone new, the very same process which we perhaps were so fortunate to take part in ourselves.