Saying it Out Loud

When you love someone, you should tell them. Not because you want them to love you back. Not because you want to make a fool of yourself. Not because you have a right to say so. Not because you know you can stand by your word.

Love, in itself, should be said as often as you can. Whether it’s fleeting and momentary or whether its the kind that scars you for life, it should always be said. Whether it’s romantic, platonic, to any kind of love, we should always say it out loud.

It does not matter if the love goes away the next day. What’s important is that when it was there, you were able to let the other person know how you felt. If you think the love is never going away, you have all the more reasons to say it.

Let’s try that with our family. Let’s tell them we love them. Let’s build our circle of love, and maybe in time, we can make a bigger circle and include as many people as we can in our loving hearts.

Truth, Lies, and in Between

Lies. There's only black and white, right? You lie or you don't lie. There shouldn't be any middle ground. But that's impossible. It always has a huge gray area in between. Everybody always has an excuse why they tell lies.

Personally, I try to tell the truth. I always tell the truth, even if it's inconvenient. However, I am not a tactless person who will tell the whole truth without considering whether the person who hears it will love it or not.

They always say that the truth sets us free. I don't see that sometimes. There are instances wherein, we are better off not knowing certain things. We let our children go on believing in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy so as not to take away their innocence. We let them continue with the fantasy of prince charming and sleeping beauty. We do it because we don't want to ruin the fun from childhood. We want them to stay as blissfully innocent for as long as we can protect them.

That goes the same for lies. We don't always tell the truth not only because we want to protect ourselves but also because we want to protect the people we care about. If you intend to tell the truth only because we want to clear out our darkened conscience, then we need to think again. If we have committed mistakes and want to come clean just so we can live without the guilt that haunts us every sleepless night, I don't think we even deserve the freedom we get from telling the truth.

Yes. Honesty is the best policy. However, if your honesty is due to selfish reasons, then what good does it bring? Seriously. Do they really deserve the heartache? Should we tell them the truth, even if it hurts or destroys them, just so we can go back to pretending nothing happened and live our own little lives as if we never hurt anyone? I don't think so.

I would never tell the truth, but if I deserve to carry the guilt, I'd gladly do it. I'd gladly live with the guilt than live to see myself destroy the people I love only because I want to keep myself as clean as an unused white sheet. I don't think I would ever be happy anyway.

But that's all just me, you know. If you don't agree with me, you don't have to. We all have our own ways of seeing things. What would you actually do yourself? When do you think is the right time to tell a lie? Or is there never a right time for lies? I'd love to know.