Waiting for the blood moon to rise, so I might as well, though I do ask myself why I'm not mugging, a nagging question that's been at the back of my head for much of the day.

I went for a proper run this evening; jogged down to the stadium and started running laps. It's pretty telling of my physical condition that I could only run 1.2 (I'll leave you to guess whether it's km or rounds) continuously and had to walk 1 round at least. The funny thing was that my legs felt perfectly fine, only my heart and lungs were having difficulty holding out. Heh but I had my worst cramps ever afterwards, when I jumped up to reach the pullup bar. My feet dangled and the calf muscles on both legs spontaneously cramped up, forcing me to stand on tiptoe for awhile before I managed to force myself to stand properly in order to stretch the muscle. Oww. Idk whether I'll be able to run tomorrow.

The most insidious lies aren't those you tell other people, but those you tell to yourself.  Now, I could just leave that line there and move on, but I have this horrible penchant for over-elaboration, which does tend to ruin the simplistic beauty of a single line. A pity... Well, moving on:


I've been reading this book: On and off the past few weeks, and it does tend to give one certain ideas. Now, I'm not even halfway through the book, and looking at the chapter titles, I think these ideas may be in the latter part, but I just wanna throw them out first, to see whether they change after reading that portion. 


So, going back to that first line: The most insidious lies aren't those you tell other people, but those you tell to yourself. The classic knee-jerk response of most when they realize they've been lied to is mistrust. (Note that my use of "most" here may be holly inaccurate. In fact, it may even be intentionally inaccurate, with the intent of imbuing you, the reader with a sense of superiority, of being above the masses, and hence endearing myself to you. Go figure.) Those of more questioning inclinations may ask why the lie was told: was it a white lie? to gain some sort of personal benefit? for the greater good? was it with malicious intent? etc. The possible reasons are endless, it seems. But it is undeniable, with a culture that salutes honesty (on the most basic level, at least) that lying to another member of society is generally frowned upon. Why then, do I say that below such lies lie (pardon the pun) a lower level of lies, i.e. those which you tell yourself?

Well, I'm not sure how to put it, actually, it seems quite intuitive to me, but just try seeing it this way: It's one thing to cheat/lie to the rest of the world, but quite another to extend the veil of deception over yourself as well, right? Belligerently telling yourself that it doesn't matter to you, when it really does; that you don't care, when you actually do. Even worse are the promises that you make to yourself, which you fail to keep. To put it simply, when you lie to yourself, when you fail yourself, you lose something. It's not something that's readily quantifiable, but if I had to put it into words, I guess I'd say that it erodes your self-confidence. Not only that; lies can't mask the truth forever, no? You may be able to get by, floating blissfully in that bubble of self-deceit, but the truth has a tendency of intruding at the most inopportune of moments. And all that awaits, is a long, hard fall. I still remember this episode of Singapore Idol a few seasons back (I forget how many), when we were still chasing the American Idol craze that really left me with a vivid impression. One of the idol hopefuls (and I mean this in the loosest sense of the word) was this girl, she couldn't sing, couldn't dance, and was attempting some easily forgettable song. It seemed like a parody. She was rebuffed by the judge, harshly, and broke down. I recall myself wondering how she couldn't have known that that was the only possible outcome; didn't her friends say anything to her? And mustn't she have known, on some level, exactly how good she was?

Heh, but of course, if you take another slant, look at it from another angle (there seem to be an infinite amount of them, these days) You could see such "lies" as personal motivation, to put in actual effort to turn the lie into reality.

Well, it's almost 4, and I'm admittedly losing steam, having had to play hide-and-seek with the eclipsing moon that finally disappeared behind the screen of clouds for good, and having my spirits dampened when aforesaid clouds unleashed a downpour that'd been building up for the better of the evening, sending my family scurrying indoors, so I'll cease the spammage here. (Or I could always save the post and come back to it another day, but it requires a certain mood, y'know, and I find that once I set things aside, I tend to take awhile before re-embarking on them, on the rare occasions that I do. My backlog of unpublished drafts holds testament to that)

Darn it, Bleach isn't out yet. One of the reasons why I'd like to take up Japanese after the A's, then I could volunteer in a scanlating team and get first access to those raws :D /Otaku