Hypocricy is not an all encompassing term...

Why are we so cruel to each other? It's not just a bad habit. It's like a disease. One we can't stop or cure easily, much like drug addiction or alcoholism. It's like Cancer: It eats away at you and others.
                                                                                                           --Nanette Stein

I recently decided to stop posting pictures of unsuspecting people and their bad clothing choices on Facebook. That I needed to stop practicing my amateur photo journalism skills because it might be mean. But this is who I am. Not mean or intentionally hurtful, but opportunistic, maybe? I enjoy entertaining others, maybe? I am trying not to be a hypocrite. That's what this post is about. I have good feelings of potential enlightenment inside of me, and I want to share these insights, yet I create comic relief at others unwitting expense. I am big enough to admit this, and humble enough to want to change it.

Sometimes I give off that I have a very rough exterior. So maybe things that I write don't match up to the persona that  I give off, to the ideals people have of me. Sometimes my work, and by work I mean J-O-B, brings out the worst in me. Sometimes dealing with the people that I have to deal with at my job brings out the worst in me. Sometimes I bring out the worst in me. I don't steal, cheat, bestow physical violence onto others, road rage (any more), or park in handicapped parking spaces...So, what is my worst? Speaking derogatorily against others. That, I feel, is what I do to be at my worst. I have a "rough" exterior. I AM trying to change it. It comes and goes, my success at it. I know what I believe in my heart, and I practice it diligently, much of the time...but I am often forgetful. I am not perfect, and I feel my greatest lesson is that I remember that none of us are.

Being as it may, and me being as I am, I had a slight worry at first that people might be confused about what they may read in a lot of my posts. That it doesn't match up to the personality of the person that they "know" from being acquainted with me. I know I have and will continue to write about positive thinking, visualization, gratitude, feelings of love, compassion, understanding.
But I am trying to figure out what this is. This need for us to please everyone (and we all do it, no matter what we tell ourselves). Why do we feel the need to sometimes pretend to be someone that we are not? Are we really all just chameleons changing who we are to meet our needs? The needs of others?  I know that I do that. I change who I am to adapt to the situation that I am in. I adapt to the environment, the people that I am with at the time. I am very good at that. It makes them comfortable. I am not, however, being deceptive. At least, I don't think that I am. I am changing my hat, as it were. But am I true to myself? I believe that IS myself. When does it get to the point where I am adapting to please others too much? I don't think I do that, either.  I don't do anything I don't want to do. Not really. That's the glory of maturity. Age. I don't have to be around you if I don't want to be. But I digress. This is about you being confused about me. I hope you aren't. I hope you see that in me, is you. That we all have quirks. We are all "different". We are all OK. We don't have to please everyone.
This is just all a part of my quest to find myself. Who I am. Who I want to be.
I am sarcastic and snarky, but I also love and have compassion. I am not ashamed of it. I am trying to understand it better. But, why? To make sure I'm OK? I know I'm OK. All is well and everything is falling rightfully in it's place. So, am I a hypocrite? My initial response was "aren't we all"? But, now, I think it's more like "I think we are all just like infants. We don't know better until we are taught. Who that teacher is, we will find in our own time. It is NOT an individual process. It takes each other, like stepping stones, to mark our paths".

"Our path is laid before us, we just have to dig through the weeds"--Nanette Stein