Housekeeping diplomatics.
You buy a new shirt. On the inside you see a little plastic bag with an extra button for it. You:
a) put it in the place that you keep all the extra buttons that come with clothing purchases
b) look at it wondering if you should keep it or not, put it on your desk, and six months later stumble upon it again wondering what shirt it came from
c) throw it straight away, since you know you'll lose it and you'll probably never need it
I've been told there are two types of people in the world. Keepers and throwers. I'm definitely going from the former to the latter. Definitely going from option (a) to (b) to (c).
Perhaps because of the state of my abode, I've become really intolerant of clutter. I used to keep things should I need them "someday". Now I revel in the feeling of throwing stuff out and actually seeing my carpet again. There is a sense of triumph after some serious junk-throwing. By no means am I a neat person now (pigs don't fly haha), but I no longer have that adolescent indifference to a messy room.
Today I got that irritation at clutter again, and started cleaning the house. Doesn't really seem like blogworthy news, but just hear me out.
My mother and I have different ideology when it comes to the hoarding/throwing issue. If I am somewhat left wing, then she is more conservative than the gun-wielding folk in Texas. Not only do I have to be careful of my words on this post now, the bigger challenge is to respect her and still live with the clutter in my house. I have tried to reason, I have offered to clean stuff out for her, but she insists that everything we hoard has some purpose, whether now or sometime in the perhaps future should one day the world run out of jam jars, or should I fail medicine so badly that I'll need my year 9 Signpost textbook again.
I love my mum, so up until recently I have just left things the way they were. I throw out my crap, she keeps hers.
But lately it's getting too much. I can't walk anywhere without tripping on something. So one day when no one was home, I started throwing things out like nobody's business. I was so scared that Mum would tell me off, but she never even noticed.
So today, everyone's out again, and I'm on an excavation mission once more. But the whole time I'm still thinking, is this wrong? Should I not be doing this? Is this respectful and loving? Am I still honouring my folks?
I don't know. All I know is that I want to walk around without stubbing my toes anymore.
You know I think Mum became a hoarder because Grandma used to throw everything out...
Liars.
The next sentence is going to make me sound very naive.But wow, people lie.From this website (check it if you have time, it's a worthy read)...We are lied to about 200 times each day.
Most people lie to others once or twice a day and deceive about 30 people per week.
The average is 7 times per hour if you count all the times people lie to themselves.
We lie in 30 to 38% of all our interactions.
College students lie in 50% of conversations with their mothers.
People lie to others once or twice a day. Some of these lies would have been directed at me. How many times have I been lied to this week? This month or this year?
More importantly, which ones were the lies?
When I was really little, I used to lie for no reason. I used to make up stories about lots of things that weren't remotely true, just for the sake of it. I made up aunties and uncles and cousins and pets and what have you. For my first grade composition, I wrote about my "cat". Come over one day and I'll show it to you; it actually got published in our school yearbook. (My school in HK obviously had too much money on its hands but that's another story).
Well anyway, one day, a few months into my first year of primary school, my then-best friend and I were standing outside the school waiting for the bus (this is how well I remember it). Suddenly she turns to me and goes, "I have to tell you something. Sometimes I make up things to make my story sound more interesting, but my mum taught me last night that it was wrong to lie so I'm not going to do it anymore. I just want you to know that what I said before might not have been true, but from now on I'm going to try not to lie".
Seriously, that's what she said (though I'm not sure if you'll believe me given the topic I'm writing about =P). I still remember it today, 15 years later because I'd never had anyone say that to me, ever. Now as I look back, she showed maturity waaayyy beyond her 6 years of life. Even as a 6 year old, I was too ashamed of my own lies and too proud to admit to her that I did the same thing too. I think all I said was "okay" and changed the subject. I lied about my lying to maintain my "integrity"; how rife with irony that was I can only appreciate now.
I don't know how suddenly I started thinking about this again. But the other day I just realised that I take what people tell me for granted a hundred percent of the time. I function on the presumption that whatever people tell me is the truth. To have to second-guess every fact that you're presented with throughout the day would be truly awful; living in naivety's still got to be a cut above living in a perpetual state of distrust.
But people do lie. To me, to you. Not just establishments or institutions or advertisements. People closest to you. People you trust. About trivial things sometimes, but about things that matter too. About things that would devastate you if you found out that you'd been lied to. I'm sure in the constellation of lies that I've (presumably) been told in my life, there are some that fall into the latter category.
And that's really scary. It's like, 30-38% of my life as I understand it could be a lie. A facade. Fiction. Fake. Fabricated. False.
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(Another F word comes to mind, but for everyone's sake I'll keep it to myself.)
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But *damn*...
