153.

I've been sitting here listening to New Found Glory all afternoon and one line in a song grabbed me.

'I should have listened to my friends, when they told me of bad intentions'

It made me think. How many times have I ignored perfectly good advice from my friends, only to later on wish that I'd listened to them in the first place?
It's a funny thing really, I mean friends are supposed to be the people that we trust to tell us the truth no matter what, the people that we turn to when we are going through a rough time.
Yet a lot us will completely ignore advice or opinions from our friends if it isn't what we want to hear.

It makes me think of a time where I had introduced an ex boyfriend to all of my friends and asked them all afterwards what they thought of said person.
All I heard was praise, and 'ooh yes he's awesome em' etc.
Then.. later on after things had turned a bit sour. Everyone told me 'oh we never liked him, you can do better'. Needless to say I was completely confused.

But now that I think about it, in a strange way it makes a lot of sense.

As I said before, a lot of the time we dismiss what our friends say, if it's not what we want to hear. And we will even make excuses as to why what our friends have said is complete bullshit. Oh.. you're just jealous, you don't know them, you don't understand.
I can see why people find it easier to just agree instead of letting their true feelings be known at the time. I mean, nobody wants to play the bad guy.

But it does worry me a little. I mean are we creating a society where nobody ever says how they truly feel because they know they're going to be put in the spot of the bad guy. And condemned as having some kind of hidden agenda, rather than just being a good friend and looking out for somebody's best interests?

I mean of course there is a line between being truthful, and being a bit horrible about it. Sometimes absolute brutal honesty might not really be the most tactful approach. But - maybe a little bit more honesty might not go astray.

Maybe we all need to be a little bit more stronger, and willing to take the blows that come with telling someone the truth. At the end of the day I know that I would feel much better knowing that I've said what I meant rather than pussyfooting around the issue.

It's just so tough these days to really know when people are being genuine at times.
It's especially harder if you've had a lot of experience with people not being genuine.
It just creates such an environment of distrust. And really.. who wants to live like that?

I'd rather be able to go into things thinking that people are genuine until proven wrong.
Quite possibly that's a bit of a blind optimism, or even naivety.
But I'm no stranger to heartbreak. I know how to pick myself up and carry on with life.
So I'd rather hope for the best, than to expect the worst.

Don't be afraid to tell people how you really feel.
We waste so much time in life worrying about this.
And if you're anything like me you know, life is far too precious to waste even a minute.