From the first day of our lives, we are made to believe; believe that this is real, believe that we can find someone to love, believe that the sky is blue, believe that there is life after death, believe that the bad guy we see in our rooms during the night is just… fruit of our imagination.

During the days when we are children strange things happen to us. We see things no one else around us sees, shadows moving when walking home from school, we hear someone following us in the dark but there is no one when we turn. Our parents ‘assure’ us that we are wrong, and that there is nothing to fear in the dark. And yet when we are alone in the dark, we feel it; we feel there’s something more, we feel someone else looking at us in the shadows. And then… we grow up.

When we are young our mind absorbs because it is clean, fresh and willing to learn and explore. It is a known and scientifically proven that a child’s mind is like a sponge. It is also known that our mind is ‘shaped’ during the early years of our life. During these years we learn how to speak through trial and error, we start gathering information about what is wrong and what is right, we start to learn about the religion of the region in which we live, we start to collect our own set of prejudices too. During these years our mind is like an empty bag and everyone starts putting his thoughts and ideas into this bag and we, unwillingly, accept these concepts.

For the rest of our lives we live with these thoughts embedded deep in our soul. And unless something happens or someone helps us realize, we never ask “why?”.

This brings me to think… what if we are not alone in this world? What if there is someone else? What if the pondering of our parents, our friends and the media that the beings we used to see in the dark when we were kids has made our mind block those same beings?

After all each different mind reacts differently to the situations it is exposed to. And we all know senses do not deliver a pure interpretation of the world. We are very easily defied by our senses. So sometimes you are walking outside at night and you hear a voice, you turn but see no one… what if you did see someone there but your eyes and mind interpreted it as just a shadow? What if that same pondering of our parents made the mind indifferent to these beings and just interprets them as something ‘normal’?

Some people do feel them. We cannot ignore the fact that people do see ghosts. Most people, even though they hide it for fear of being laughed at and called insane, feel something when they’re alone in the dark. You can’t call it fear of the unknown for we all know what’s inside our kitchen both day and night. But none of us really know what makes us fear it. Sometimes you have to stop and think… what if we were brought up to block the supernatural out? What if we can ‘re-program’ our minds to see those beings?

But then the real, final question arises… are we really willing to see that which we have felt – but never seen – all our lives?

This is a story I stumbled upon today. Apparently some people can never get enough... or maybe it's true that crime (or in this case, cheating) doesn't pay.

A friend of mine had been going out with her boyfriend for about a year and a half. They seemed to lead a happy life until something starting going wrong in their relationship. Who knows? Maybe it was just an accumulation of misunderstandings or maybe it was just an increase in the rate of arguments between the two. They didn't leave each other... not until her boyfriend realised she was cheating on him! And with whom? Yep you guessed it... HIS FRIEND!

As soon as her boyfriend realised what was going on he confronted them both (finding out where they were through his friends) and pressed them to confess how long they had been seeing each other. She promptly replied, "Just a couple of weeks." Apparently, she thought it would de-dramatize the situation... but it didn't. Instead the two guys ended up fighting over the restaurant table until they were both kicked outside the cafe. To prevent from complicating things further, they decided to part ways and live on -- the original boyfriend alone, and the "intruder" with the girl.

Such fairness in life...

Today I heard from another friend of mine that the girl is now missing her ex. At first I laughed out loud. Just un-f**kin-believable. But then when I thought about it I saw it clearer and clearer until it made sense in a perverted kind of way.

The reason that makes most sense is that people sometimes cannot hold through the stress. Like a scared captain on a small boat in a storm, a person can sometimes give up. The coward captain might wish that he was instead in the carribean islands, sailing the calm seas. And people in stressed-out relationships sometimes get to have their wishes made through... by seeing someone else. Cheating. But when that same person decides to re-evaluate his or her life, one finds that their is a hole, and that running away from reality -- cheating on a boyfriend or girlfriend -- will never fill that hole.

On the other hand, the courageous captain, sailing against six-storey-high waves with only his small boat to support him, will face the dangers and the troubles instead of wishing he was somewhere else. It gets tough and tougher but once you're through -- once you manage to solve the problems and the differences -- you feel fulfilled. No gaping hole in your soul.

Just one big beating heart made of two.