Good or Bad?

Ladies and gentlemen (though I have always wondered why 'ladies' comes first! probably because of the saying 'ladies first', but then, why ladies first?) anyways lets rest the thought for now.

A lot has been happening in my life and lives of people around and close to me of late. A lot has always happened, but the recent happenings appear to carry more significance even in the short attention span than most other events did in their short term attention spans in my life. A lot has been learnt, and there does not seem to be a bottom line per se, but only learning, and more of it.
I had started believing firmly that the reason why people start pursuing materialistic pleasures is because pursuing relations or human beings is just not worth it. Parallely, I was contradicting myself, because I wanted to still pursue feelings, and the pain and pleasure they offer.

Amidst all this, it appeared to me that things are just not the same anymore. Most things around seem like a farce. I had begun trying to read between the lines with every person. I had actually begun implementing an advice given to me long ago on a jovial note, and had begun telling people what they wanted to hear and not what I wanted to say. I was losing my genuine behavior, the true me. Slowly, I had begun forming a protective shell around me. Is it good ? The wall that I was trying to create, and not letting people penetrate it and at the same time being scared about the shell enveloping me completely, was a kind of a contradiction. Was the act of two timing my own mind bad ? I had begun to firmly believe that nobody is genuine and the best thing is to avoid any situation where I would be vulnerable and would end up in a situation where I would get hurt.

All said and done, it was chaos, and usually things get sorted out, but this was increasingly becoming a trouble.

Recently, over a chat on a drive, with one of my friend, he gave me some food for thought. He did not particularly classify people as genuine and not so genuine. People are different. But if one starts to create a shell around himself, he/she ends up portraying a character that he/she isn't. The perception offered to people is an illusion by itself, hence the judgment that people make of one is a completely distorted one. This in turn leads to a false circle being formed around oneself, an infinite loop within another loop.

One would be blocking the only window that one has to the outer world : Oneself. In the longer run, the people who get filtered and eventually stick with you are the people who know the true person in you and are similar to you. Hence, by pretending to be someone else, you are taking away the possibility of similar people coming towards you.

In any case, cheers to genuineness.....