Looks and truths

© J Hardy Carroll

“It was once a tall, bushy tree this one”, he said as they were walking about old ruins.

“In a princess’ castle!” she added all bubbly.

Analine was still young with a vivid imagination and the innocence of a sweet child. She concocted stories in her head about a dream world and retained the optimism that it could be realised.

She would soon grow and learn.

That the world isn’t always as prudent as it looks.

That not everyone is happy when you are.

That appearances don’t always reveal true intentions.

That intuition is usually always right the first time.

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

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The safety of true friends

What does it take to feel safe?

Is a lockdown enough? Is staying away from everyone and everything? How do we feel safe without raising walls and keeping everyone out? How do we stay safe if we simply don’t live, don’t allow ourselves to experience anything?

There is a story about a woman living in India sometime in the Middle Ages who owned a pet snake, which she loved. The snake was four metres long and seemed healthy until one day it stopped eating. The snake’s fasting continued for the next weeks and the woman, now desperate that she could not get the snake to eat, rushed to the vet as an ultimate solution. The vet carefully listened to the woman and then asked: “Does the snake sleep with you at night and wraps itself around you?” “Yes!” the woman replied surprised at how spot on the vet’s speculation was. She expressed her sorrow that she could not help her friend. The vet then told her, “Madam, your snake is not ill; it is preparing to eat you. Every day it comes around you and you think it is hugging you, it is simply measuring you up and preparing to attack. It is not feeding so as to have enough room to digest you more easily”.

The moral of this story: not every person you consider a friend has true intentions. You may have people around you who seem to care and with whom you share everything, whom you love and care for and believe that they feel the same. But, some think otherwise. They are snake-friends. Because kindness and hugs aren’t always honest and genuine. Consider that everyone who betrays you are people you know, people you’ve sat with and shared your innermost thoughts, who you gave a part of your soul to, because these are the people whom you gave the key to hurting you.

No matter how much they hurt, such experiences serve to teach us to read people better. To measure up who we consider worthy of our attention, time, energy, and friendship. Not everyone is bad. But not everyone is good either.

We are the ones who choose the people to accompany us in our life’s journey. The ones with whom we feel safe under any circumstance. And those who are worthy of sharing our most important moments are really the ones who prove to be so without even being asked.  

Defying your mind

©Sarah Potter

There is trouble with listening to your mind. It sometimes poisons you. Because it tricks you into believing things that aren’t true. It can concoct scenarios and play them out in your head, persuading you that this is reality. And you’re trapped. You’re drowned in negative thoughts that fog your vision of what truly is.

It takes courage and practice to realise your mind is deceiving you and to react to it. Defiance is always considered a radical act. Even against your own self.

It’s not easy standing up to you. Because the most dangerous enemy you have is yourself.

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

A rattling realisation

It is said that it takes something rattling to reveal who you truly are and what you want. But it takes something equally dramatic to shake you into realising who you truly have around you. We don’t really know the people in our lives. We only know as much as they allow us to see.

We often spend years thinking of a person as our closest ally, someone with whom we share our darkest secrets, our most intimate thoughts and our sincerest dreams. Only for a time to come – an incident to occur – that will serve as a slap in the face and we will come to see that they were nothing of what we thought. People we consider friends turn out to be snakes – deceitful and sly, sometimes even stabbing us in the back while all the while smiling widely and offering us support.

These are the worst kind of people; those who act as close associates in life, but tend to behave in the exact opposite way of how they advise you. They are usually the ones who blame others to you, yet hypocritically befriend them as if nothing ever occurred. The ones who see how others have wronged you but instead of – ethically, at least – taking your side, continue to have more communication and flattery-exchange with the former than with you.

There are people whose behaviour you cannot understand simply because it is completely contrary to the way you would act. Not everyone shares the same mindset or beliefs. And certainly not everyone has the same heart as you. Perhaps that is the most difficult to acquiesce or apprehend. That sometimes there is simply no answer to the question ‘why’ and we just need to accept the reality of things, let go, and move on.

If anything, for our own peace of mind.

Deceptive Looks

When you see a beautiful rose for the first time, you are so overwhelmed by its appearance that you pay no attention to the thorns it hides. Looks are deceiving. We only see what others choose to show. Therein the deception lies. That we believe what we see, we choose to understand only that which we see before us without questioning whatever lies beneath. And that is how misunderstandings arise. Because we see the innocent flower and not the serpent lying under it. We are fooled into believing that things are as they seem. But they are not.

As children, we are constantly prompted to not trust everything that we see. For even salt seems like sugar. And if you’ve mistaken this for your tea you certainly understand the consequences of deceptive looks. Plus, not everything that glitters is gold.

A Scottish proverb says “do not judge by appearances; a rich heart may be under a poor coat”.

As humans, as rational beings, we need to believe that what we see is true. But in a world dominate but so much deception, pretention and falsity, hardly anything we see nowadays reflects reality.

In the end, all we can really do is trust our instinct. And judge according to actions. For it is those who run to you when they sense your need who really care, not the ones who flaunt their presence when everything is fine.

 

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions” – Leonardo Da Vinci

A peacock’s strut

©Jean L. Hays

It was one of those days, when you look out of the window lost in your thoughts. A strange bird caught her attention. It reminded her of a saying her grandfather used to tell her: “be a peacock in a world full of blackbirds”. It was a prompt to refuse to be ordinary.

But in our world today, everyone believes they’re a peacock. Strutting along, gleaming and boasting of their supposed abilities and good looks. “Appearance is deceiving”, she pondered.

She looked closer at the bird. It seemed ordinary. “A peacock that rests on its feathers is just another turkey”.

 

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

Celebrity VIP to run for US President

Who? When? Why? Who?!

See what happened there? You got all excited and intrigued by the title you wanted to read more, didn’t you? Curiosity is a pain!

I hate to tell you this though, but you were tricked into reading this blog post.

Pretty much like every misleading headline or advertisement does to you.

The majority are misleading, false and have nothing to do with what they really mean.

News headlines that promise to reveal something shocking and a “worldwide exclusive” (as if the whole world is sitting at the edge of its seat waiting for a development in e.g. a royal wedding or the end of a year-long television series).

Advertisements that promise one thing and deliver another. Things like “half-off anything from this shelf”, but when you reach the counter you are told that you had to get two of the same items in order to benefit from the offer.

Airlines advertising low-price tickets but when you are about to book you see the price rising sky high due to added taxes, administrative costs etc etc. Even the “change without charge” is not true, as the only thing you don’t pay is the administrative costs.

Every day we face situations such as these. Things that mislead us and in essence deceive us into believing their marketing crafts.

Then we are left feeling cheated and make a racket out of it to anyone who dares listen.

We just need to develop the sense of reading beyond the “charming” lines, judge what the reality would be and pay attention to avoid being duped (again)!

What people say and what they mean is usually different. We just need to learn to understand what they mean despite what they say.

 

Also part of Daily Prompt: Ripped from the Headlines!

 

Tragic but no comedy

Justin looked down at the body that lay lying between the rubbish dumpster and the ladder which would have served as his escape route. It was pitch black outside still and if it weren’t for the growling cats on heat, nothing would have been heard. Not even cars rushing by. It was a peculiar night. A full moon always pre-empts something strange. Justin believed his ancestors’ belief to be true. And tonight it had become a reality.

Two hours ago he was standing there in the living room of his fourth-floor apartment drinking an Irish beer with his friend. “Friend”. He had just met him a week ago. How well can you get to know someone in such a short time? Even if you did spend an unusually large proportion of your time each day in their company?

Why? Because what they shared went beyond the ‘normal’. And the ‘legal’.

No, they weren’t smuggling, selling or growing drugs.

No, they were not into human trafficking.

No, they were not into something disgusting or perverted.

They were running around town all day, trying to do a good deed to change someone’s life.

They smiled at everyone in the street, no matter if they got sworn at or nearly hit in return. They truly believed that one single smile, one good deed, no matter how small, may one day save a life.

It was good karma if nothing else. And it certainly made them feel their day was worthwhile.

Until that moonlit night.

Justin remembered that they had even joked about the only thing missing from that “twilight” sky was a howling wolf.

It was ironic that a cat howled like a wolf when the body fell four stories down and crashed onto its tail.

He didn’t mean for it to happen. He never wished anything bad for anyone. Not even him.

It did not matter that he caught him stealing money from his wallet. He offered to give him more if he needed help.

But Justin did not understand why the aggravation and the change of tone all of a sudden. What was with this attitude? The person who said a smile would make anyone’s day now suddenly lost his own. Without reason or explanation. He didn’t use to be like this.

And then it happened. The irritation brought about a quarrel which turned bloody. And then, he asked Justin for some water. Those fatal drops of transparent liquid would seal his fate.

For as soon as Justin returned with the glass in his hand he barely managed to avert a dagger stained with blood flying towards him. And his “friend” was falling butt-first out the open window. As if he was diving in a water-park fun pool.

He just made sure he would seemingly signal the culprit.

Thirty minutes had gone by, with Justin playing the scene over and over in his head. The sirens had become louder now.

He drank the water, placed the dagger in the glass and hid it in his inside coat pocket. He would leave no trace.

Only one.

An Italian gold carnival mask.

He was not known as the Harlequin for nothing.

The victim had after all smiled at his Colombina… And things, even a smile, are never what they seem…