Men are not all about sex
I just came back from watching the movie ,The Ugly Truth, with a good friend of mine. The movie basically revolves around this guy, who has his own TV show which primarily propagates on the fact that men are just about sex, and a woman should do everything to make themselves pleasing to men if she wants him.
Now whether the story is written in the sense to deliberately portray a typical alpha-male scenario is guessable, but the fact is, we know that some movies are made to reflect the current culture that we live in. Some movies typify the society that we are in. And my firend, who watched the movie with me, (and who is a girl) also concurred with this fact. Most women actually DO think that men are just about sex.
I guess the problem herein lies in the skewed way of how women think men view love. To women, a man is said to experience love when it comes to sex. So while the common belief that a woman tends to associate love to an emotion, for a man, love is equated with sex. Having sex is a man's way of getting love.
Lust Caution!
Our culture today has blurred this line, so much so that we can't really tell the difference between the two. We don't really know which is which and how to spot one from the other. There's actually two folds to this and they both relate to one another :
Fold 1 : Absence of Love Leading to Lust
Hugh Hefner, Playboy's founder once commented that the reason he founded Playboy was simply because he did not experience much love growing up. This absence of love forced Hefner to look for love elsewhere, which led him to founding Playboy, where he could get all the 'love' possible. What was more disturbing and sad in some way was, Hefner's love was a counterfeit, which was disguised in the form of lust.
Too often times we hear lonely young males who become addicted to pornography. While there are many reasons as to why this destructive habit is becomes an addiction to some, for the most part, it is because of lonliness, which means the absence of love. People often think that women are the ones that long to be loved and cherished, but they often forget that males, guys also need this. Guys need to hear that they are being loved and that they are being cared, that they are being cherished.
Alas, society does not portray these messages when it comes to defining the man. Man is defined as someone who has dominion over his territory, someone who is designed to lead and control the environment around him, and this includes his woman. Notice how society does not say that Man needs love, rather Man should control his woman, and that woman should satisfy his needs.
And so with all the sensitivity being given to the woman, Man suddenly is left to be the beast, the animal who only has his instincts, therefore if we reduce man to that level, the phrase 'think with your pants' becomes quite apt and therefore we view sex as just another physical need, which again becomes disguised in the form of love for the woman.
Fold 2 : Lust becomes the new form of Love for man
So now, love becomes twisted in the man's eye and heart, to man, love equates to lust equates to sex. And because society points us to that direction, suddenly these equations become hard coded into our brains and male human makeup.
The idea of a male being sensitive and longing for love? - That is termed as gay and softy. And because man was not made to be a softy, we are then forced to be the beast who is in control of his destiny¸ and this means engaging in sexual activity to fulfil our needs. By fulfilling our needs, we become masters or controllers of our destiny. We are in charge. We can engage in promiscuous sex with who ever we want simply because we are men and that's what we think only about.
Sadly, sex is now merely reduced to something of an entertainment or mere physical gratification
Blindly Playing Along
Having just read all that, you would probably think that perhaps women would think abit different of men? - Hardly the case. I once had a discussion with my female colleague on this, and she just phlegmatically commented that "all men are interested in is doing IT". So it's not really just merely an Ugly Truth, it's THE TRUTH (well according to women at least).
The Minority Group
While the perversity of sex is rampant in our culture today, as a guy (who has had his own fair share of dealing with sexual problems), I'm not here to ostracize all the males out there who think this way. Rather I want people, especially the ladies out there to know that there are actually guys who are not about sex at all. I've met such guys like this in my own walk of life, and trust me, these are guys who think with their minds and hearts, rather than with their pants. We want to love a woman the way she is supposed to be loved. We want to also be loved by them and just as we cherish them, to also be cherished by them. We want to lead them, to protect them and to serve them.
Nice guys somehow...will finish last
I guess no matter how much I try to stress that there such amazing and wonderful guys out there to encourage and give some hope to the women out there, I guess a part of me will always think that 'Nice Guys will finish Last'. It has nothing to do with one's self-esteem, rather I think it because women at times don't know what they really want. They think they do and so they pass up opportunities when a great guy comes along, not even bothering to give the guy a chance to see if things will ever work out, rather simply admitting that "I don't think this will work out"... for some reason, women (and also man for that matter) are always looking for something else, when sometimes, the right person is standing right in front of you.
How God changes the heart…
I know I was supposed to write about Love in my last entry, but I think I will shelf that for sometime, got other things to write about 
We just recently finished our annual Youth camp over the weekend and there was something that took me by surprise. You see, one of my colleagues had actually joined the camp, and I didn't really know it. In fact I never did think that this colleague of mine, or any of my colleagues for that matter would be interested in God and spirituality
Afterall, these kinda things were usually meant for hopeless cases, those simple-minded peasants who didn't know how to control their own destiny
Given, the nature of my company's employees, I had never expected that she would actually be interested in such things. I guess in part it's also due to previous experience where I once approached a colleague of mine who was attending RCIA whether he would be interested in joining our youth group and because the response was not so encouraging, I kinda deduced that most working people would not be interested.
Afterall, who in their right mind would blow off their Friday nights and weekends to attend church activities?
And so you could imagine the look in my face when I saw her.
What on....
"Hey Prash, so where do I park and register?" she quipped me
"Umm...what are you doing here?" I asked, with my low-tone voice
"Huh?"
"Yeah you can just park there and there!" I rapidly replied as I quickly snapped out of my astonishment look and begin pointing around.
And so, as the camp progressed, I kept a close eye on her, and I could see that she was transformed by the end of the whole camp session. She even went up to give her testimony, sharing with the audiance on how this camp has being meaningful to her.
I just sat there and wondered how on earth a person like this, (she was my senior by the way), could be so engrossed and impacted by such a camp. I mean fine, maybe I thought it was just one of those 'feeling high' things ; you're all pumped up to serve God and be as close to him and His people as possible.
5 days have already gone, and I still get text messages from her saying how impactful the camp has been. While I'm still trying to grapple with it, I think perhaps what I'm really experiecing is a real-live testimony that God can indeed change hearts. Ever since attending the camp, it seems like my friend has obtained a new lease of life. It's as though she can somehow 'breath' again ; it's as though she has found new hope in the midst of this calamity world.
While she's going through her own discovery, I guess I'm discovering mine, and the discovery is simply this - God can change people, and when he does, you're never the same. Perhaps God is using my colleague as a real testimony that He can transcend beyond corporate walls and career-minded successful people. Of course I have read such stories of God doing so, but never had I come across something like this. Never had I seen a colleague, or for that matter any colleague be so impacted by God.
To me, this is just a testimony, to show and prove that God's love can penetrate through hearts. It's a testimony proving that 'Our hearts will not rest till it rests in God" . It's a testimony proving that "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all else will be added unto you".
It may not have happened to me, but through my friend, God has worked another miracle in my life.
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you ; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" - Ezekil 36:26
"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, behold he is of a new creature; the old things have passed away and new things have come" - 2 Cor 5:17
Thoughts on Happiness – Part 1
I was just about to leave the main Yahoo site when something interesting caught my attention. The title read : Happiness - 3 amazing tips from the world's oldest study
The article was an interesting read and the findings somewhat fascinated and reaffirmed my previous held beliefs on happiness (Don't take life too seriously for example). I've always been interested in 'the pursuit of happiness' simply because I like being happy. I love the emotions and positive feelings that are associated with happiness. It's a "duh!" statement I know, but I am still writing it down because that's what I believe and like so much about happiness.
I guess maybe to a certain degree, the reason for this is simply because I grew up in a not-so-happy home where fights and arguments were cyclical and had their seasonal operation. It wasn't that my parents were bad or anything, or that either one had developed a family-breaking habit. The problem was rather (as I adult I see this a little clearer now) that old problems that were raised in the past were just swept under the carpet. Forgive and move-on was my dad's modus operandi when it came to fights and arguments.
However mum was the kind of person who needed to talk it out - something dad was crappy at. Dad didn't like to hear things out and things would end up just being swept under the carpet rather than being dealt with in a healthy manner. So naturally over time, whenever a volcano would errupt, it would be more devastating than the previous, because the previous unsettled lava would come out with the current erruption.
Hence, that's why the first tip this article recommends is to have a healthy outlet to let out your negative feelings. Pent-up feelings may be masochistic and manly, but its determining to the mind and body. Whenever I visit my local pastor to talk about mum's death and how I'm coping with it, he will always encourage me to "cry it out" and just "let it out" and I would do so unbashfully in his room while he just sits there empathizing with my sorrow and struggle. But I feel better after that, I feel light and with his encouragement I'm able to carry on.
So yeah, having a healthy outlet is good for the soul.
More on the second tip tomorrow
