Firstly, I need to vent about something, though I'm mostly over it now, I just need to put it somewhere. In a discussion with a friend earlier today, he expressed a thorough belief in something I abhor, namely the concept of "ignorance is bliss." I cannot stand that. I would much rather have a painful truth than a pretty lie. A lie is a lie, no matter how you dress it up. Willingly deceiving yourself and others is not something I have tolerance or respect for. I don't tolerate people lying to me, whether for malicious reasons or because they "didn't want to hurt" me. I am hurt more by being lied to than by anything you could ever withold from me. I just cannot understand why someone would rather lie to and delude themselves into thinking something is better than it really is. There is a world's difference between optimism and ignorance. The following paragraph is what I wanted to say to my friend, but ended up not doing so, because he is so thoroughly steeped in what he wants to believe, it gets utterly tiresome to try to convince him to see otherwise. I have tried before, to no avail, so thusly I post here to give myself at least a little piece of mind. I think lying and willingly accepting lies in substitution of truth and honesty is exponentially more despicable. If you want to live a lie, then go ahead and do it. You can keep your fake happiness and continue lying to yourself, and in doing so, also lying to your family and the people the care about you, under the pretenses of wanting to be optimistic, or you can be at least remotely in touch with reality. To me, truth and honesty are utmost, and wanting to accept anything less than that, I personally find appalling. How can you say you live a good life if you're living it through willing lies to yourself and others? That's not a life, that's a delusion. Okay, I feel a helluva lot better now. I've been needing to vent that for so long. Talking to Danny is fine for the most part, and I love the boy to death, but there are just some things that piss me off about him. Sorry for the rant on my first post here, but I really need to write that down before my head exploded.