Archive for August, 2007

The NDA

{ August 29, 2007 @ 5:19 pm } · { Emotions: Inside (mine), Emotions: Outside(not mine), Relationships: Friendship, Relationships: Love, Relationships: Miscellaneous }
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We all have secrets. Some are simple and if disclosed won’t do much damage but most people have secrets that if revelead will hurt someone.
Secrets are often confided to friends who know how to react and deal with the facts we have just told them, and they can advise us; inform us of what they think the right course of action is. And, even if against our will, we all need advice sometimes. Those friends are, at the time, worthy of our trust and that’s why we tell them our secrets, because we know they won’t fall in the wrong hands.
In fact, we trust them not to tell anyone about it. However, sometimes we feel like we don’t have to tell the confident that our secret is not to be disclosed, or we simply jump that detail. Then, the person we told our secret must make a judgement call. Was it implicit in the conversation the secrecy of the matter we discussed? Is he able to bend the conditions we set so that he can tell his/her best friend and to his/her best friend only?
The problem with telling a secret to somebody is that the person we trusted can trust someone else… and some friends are not worthy of trust.
Some secrets can be so destructive that we hide them from everyone, so that we won’t get hurted, or hurt someone. Some secrets are not meant to be passed to someone else but this means the secret must be massive and very dangerous.
But who can hold such a secret? Who has the strenght necessary to keep some things inside? Who can resist the urge of sharing the load with a friend?
When we share a secret with a friend, we are trusting in him in a level that if betrayed can destroy the friendship forever. So we have to make sure the person gets both the secret and the need of keeping it to himself; to keep it even from the ones he trusts.
A shared secret resembles a bond between two friends, a bond made of trust and danger. So we have to choose the people we trust  with dire care, because some secrets are just too dark to be put out in open light…

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Some time ago, I trusted one thing to a friend (the one from the last post) that I wasn’t able to trust to anyone before. He was and his my closest friend and I was sure he could accept it. It is the very definition of secret and he is the only friend who knows of it. The size of the secret is really massive and even my closest friends don’t know about it. Of course I trust them but there are levels of trust, and knowing this secret is the ultimate level as far as I’m concerned. Of course I’m sad I can’t tell it to my other closest friends but he was and is the only one I’m sure can cope with it. And I’m very happy he could understand and keep it secret.

Carlos André da Palma Alves

The (Dis)Connection

{ August 17, 2007 @ 5:58 pm } · { Emotions: Inside (mine), Emotions: Outside(not mine), Relationships: Friendship, Relationships: Love, Relationships: Miscellaneous }
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People disconnet and connect with each other at an amazing speed. Sometimes, we don’t even know what made us sever our connection and we feel sorry for that friend we’ve lost. And sometimes we know exactly what happened and what caused our severing and we are still sorry for our mistakes.
The point is, nothing is really eternal. And our mistakes are quite forgettable, as are the mistakes made by our friends. Last night, one former friend made me see this. And I’m grateful that he did.
Who want’s to live life with the thought of the past? I’d rather move on and remember the ones who were left behind as good people who helped me growing up and added some good new things to me.
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Some months ago, I started to get really close with one friend of mine. His personality was simply amazing: he liked the same things I like; his way of seeing life was almost the same as mine and we shared lots of common things. We started a relationship that was trully good for each of us but did not satisfy us.
It wasn’t really a strong relationship. I mean, in the friends area, it was amazing, but in the love area it was not that big of a deal. We just used to hang out and do some things boyfriends do but with the limit being “do not fall in love”. We weren’t tied to each other and in the instant one of us felt love to other person, we would end whatever we had and move on. Neither of us felt interested in other person and so, we continued with our strange relationship.
In time, we began to disconnect due to lack of time and as far as I’m concerned, interest. It has been since mid May that I’ve never talked and met with him.
Yesterday, he invited me to go meet him near his house, which is relatively far from my house but not far enough that a long walk won’t solve. We ended up going to a mall in our vicinities.
We went shopping and going to the cinema. What happened yesterday was not in my plans but it was a possibility: our friendship was the same, it was as if the time that has passed didn’t hurt it. And one other thing happpened, we felt very strongly about each other, in a way our previous relation had not achieved, we were ready for going at it for good this time.
I am not sure if we’ll start dating and be boyfriends. But we both know it’s very likely, because we always felt love for each other, but we hid it. Yesterday, he told me that before, he really loved me and still loves but he was not ready for a long term and serious relationship. Now he is. Of course I’m really happy for our re-connection in such fashion and I know he is too. And we both know the way we feel about our relationship. I know that we are at the brink of a great and long during love. Who knows what the future may hold? Oh God, love really gets to me…

Note: Nowadays, I’m really not that fond of sentimental posts but this one was an exception. Promise!
Carlos André da Palma Alves

The Gossip

{ August 13, 2007 @ 11:40 am } · { Emotions: Inside (mine), Emotions: Outside(not mine), Relationships: Friendship }
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It is one of the oldest ways to share opinions and thoughts about someone. False opinions and thoughts, but opinions nonetheless. Everyone likes to do it, no denial there… It is fun to gossip.
A recreation we all indulge ourselves when we don’t have nothing better to do, or when we simply want to spread some poison about this or that person. The act of gossiping is much like telling a story. You have facts regarding the actions of the person in question. Then, you imagine and add some new facts…of your own.
Gossip is about talking trash, about making someone look bad to your circle of friends but without the subject knowing. Or, you can tell the person’s secrets to the wind, and hope it will lead those secrets to a nice shore, where they will grow and become dirty little secrets.
To talk about someone behind his back… I enjoy doing it, but I don’t like to make a sport out of it. When there’s someone I don’t particulary like in the vicinities, I indulge in a little harmless gossip. It makes a conversation lighter between two or more people and one good thing comes out of it: tons of laughter.

There are cases when gossip becomes something much worse, when people actually believe the things said in the conversation were true. This, can and will undermine the opinion one has over the person gossiped before.
This is one of the drawbacks, the other is when people stop to see gossip as a recreation and it becomes the only thing they can do when talking to someone.
I knew such a person. I am not friend of him nowadays, but when I was, gossip was about 85% of the content of our conversations. Personally, I think no friendship could be born out of such contents. You don’t get to know his personality, you only know his opinion about someone ( and he makes sure of that.)
I know he gossips about me, and what can I do? I gossip about him. But there is one difference: I gossip about him when I see him and move to other, far more interesting subjects of conversation, while he gossips about me, and moves on to whoever is next on his gossiping list.

Gossip. For most housewives it’s just a harmless form of recreation. An exchange of semi-interesting tibbits concerning the semi-interesting lives of people they know. But the time comes in every neighbourhood when something very interesting happens, and that’s when gossip stops being recreation and becomes obsession.
Yes, gossip is just a harmless form of recreation. It is careless talk that deals in polite fiction. It is nasty speculation thats based on not so polite fact. How do we protect ourselves from the venomous sting of such idle gossip? The best way is just to tell the truth and wait for people to start talking about someone else. -Brenda Strong in “Desperate Housewives”

Carlos André da Palma Alves

The Gay Factor

{ August 10, 2007 @ 12:45 pm } · { Emotions: Inside (mine), Emotions: Outside(not mine), Relationships: Friendship, Relationships: Love }
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I have lots of gay friends. I am gay so having gay friends is not a surprise. Gladly, those friends are very discret and it’s a rare thing to see them reveal any signs at all of their homosexuality.
One of those friends has an aqquantice, who is also gay but slightly different from the majority of my gay friends and aqquantices.
And what would that difference be? He likes sex. Lots of sex. With lots of different people he barely knows (hopefully not at the same time). And there resides my criticism. I have nothing against people having sex. It’s one of the greatest things Man has ever came up with, and God, it’s amazing. But having sex with loads of people? (Yet again, not at the same time.)
I don’t particularly enjoy the idea of having sex with people I don’t know, you don’t know a thing about the partner and sex is meant for two people who love each other.

Ence the title and the introduction. Some gay people tend to be a little more… sex-driven, it’s a need all people have, but those some gay people just have improved that need to all new level. There are those who hang out in gay bars with one sole purpose: sex.
Some say it’s due to the fact that we are men and men want more sex than women do. Perhaps, perhaps not.
But there’s one thing the aqquantice of my friend is doing: spreading a misunderstanding to the heterosexual community (and the majority of our society), that gay people don’t want relationships based on love,  they solely want sex.

Our society has gone a long way fighting for gay rights, achieving new milestones in the fields of work rights, hate crimes and prejudice in general.
So I think we don’t need other things to affect our hard-gained place in society.
As far as I am concerned, I do enjoy drooling over guys who pass by me; I’m fully aware that sometimes I do get along with people who just want to have sex. But I’m proud of only having sex with people I trully love or feel strongly about.
Not with someone who rides from Algarve and, while he’s here, has sex with someone.
The gay factor might be strong to those who feel it, but it can be resisted. And I do prefer people who resist it. Up to a certain point, I dispise people who just want sex and are hollow inside.

Note: The text above is taken out of my experience. Of what I think it’s true. Of course, that does not mean the text is  the actual truth. It’s just my view on the subject. I hope I’m not hurting anyone or their feelings, especialy the one’s of the gay community, which would be hypocritical since I’m gay.

Carlos André da Palma Alves

The Invitation

{ August 9, 2007 @ 2:56 pm } · { Relationships: Friendship }
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Everyone enjoys having friends. And why wouldn’t they? They are (almost) always there for us when we don’t know how to manage this or that problem; they talk to us when we don’t want to hear the painful, yet, undeniable truth and above all, they nudge us to the right path.
Across mankind’s history,  great thinkers and ordinary people have wandered through friendship and said how important it is for us, so, it is only natural that friendship is one of our most beloved and exalted relationships, which every human being longs for.
That urge to be well succeeded in having friends, can and will bring people closer to us, people who have some or many things in common with our way of seeing the world; with our interests or with anything that is part of our personality and then, friends are born.
The abilty to make friends in a easy way is a magnificent trait of one’s personality and can help us a long way building a group of friends.
I think the utmost reason for having friends is meaning. All people crave meaning for their lifes, it’s meaning that keeps us going, meaning that binds us together and, up to a certain point, our meaning/objective is what we are.
And that’s what friends do, setting up goals in our life.

We invite people into our lifes with the purpose of seeing if, in time, those people could make good friends. I don’t have anything against that, on the contrary, I think making new friends is important, fun, can help us grow a little bit more and I incite every single one of my friends to contact new people and create new friendships.
Nonetheless, an invitation means lots of things: an open door to our intimacy, a way to know us better but most importantly, a invitation resembles welcoming.
Some are more prone to invite people because they didn’t start building friendships earlier, and now, they are quite desperate because they fear loneliness, and so, everyone that shows the slightest signals of wanting a friendship are immediatly accepted as friends. No wondering why and no doubts. Just faith. In the unknown.
In the great majority of cases, the people whom we invite are well-intentioned and only mean us good. Sadly, a majority of anything means that it’s not 100% of the anything in question. So, when making friends and inviting people in, we could be making one of the greatest errors we ever made.

How many times were we proved wrong about someone? How many times we didn’t saw it coming? How many times we thought someone could be the oposite of what we thought he was?
What I’m trying to say is that, sometimes, people aren’t what they seem. Sometimes even the most kind friend we ever met, can have an agenda. Of course, these people are a minority, but they exist nonetheless.
From the outside, one seems what he wants other people to believe he is. But underneath…

Note: This is my first 100% English post, so, it comes as no surprise if it has errors. Should you find any, please comment the post correcting it.

Carlos André da Palma Alves