I read an article on medium by one of Medium’s star writers today.

A person who always gets a thousand green hearts and seems to be really popular. People seem to really relate with her.

I am always , throughly amused that I just cant understand the appeal… it’s not so much a reflection of them, but of me.

I’ve read some of her stuff before and I always, mostly, totally, completely, disagree with her.

On her life philosophy, on her morality, purpose , on the most important things. How she sees the world..

She promotes the philosophy that life is about being selfish. It’s really the same idea the world has been operating on for centuries. Today it has a flashy new face. It’s pride in being wealthy and successful and it’s pride in ignoring what isn’t , and what isn’t useful to you. If it cant serve you and make you more successful or wealthier , then you have no need for it. If you’re not wealthy, or happy, or successful materially, something is wrong with you. That is a wide spread thought now. All over the United States. The poor or unhappy, are poor and unhappy because something is morally or spiritually wrong with them.

( I don’t find it a coincidence that all spiritual giants and prophets and sages have been materially bereft, and that being spiritually healthy is a non priority in today’s world. )

( I also don’t think that being well adjusted to a sick society is mentally healthy)

Today she posted an article and posed that we don’t really meet people when we meet them ( agree) and that these questions Im going to list allow you to really meet and understand on a deeper level who someone is ( disagree).

I decided it might be fun to answer these questions, and create my own. So here goes.

1. If you could have superpowers, would you use it for good or for evil?

Answer: good, absolutely .

2. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

Answer: 34 pretty much my prime.

3. Would you accept the gift of reading other people’s minds if it meant you could never turn it off?

Answer: No.

4. If the average human life span was 40 years, how would you live your life differently?

Answer: I would have stayed single for most of it.

5. Do you think crying is a sign of weakness or strength?

Answer: strength

6. Would you rather be able to eat as much as you want with no weight gain, or require only 3 hours of sleep a day?

Answer: EAT!

7. If you had to choose to live without one of your 5 senses, which one would you give up?

Answer: sight

8. In what ways are you the same as your childhood self?

Answer: I still will get my ass kicked for the guy who is getting his ass kicked.

9. If you had your own TV network, what would it be about?

Answer: Spirituality.

10. If you’re in a bad mood, do you prefer to be left alone or have someone cheer you up?

Answer: left alone- unless it’s my tribe of people.

11. Would you rather know without a doubt the purpose and direction of your life or never have to worry about money for the rest of your life?

Answer: money

12. If you could master one skill you don’t have right now, what would it be?

Answer: tie between martial arts or fluent in several different languages.

13. What song typifies the last 24 hours of your life?

Answer: Hmm. Neko Case , I wanna be the moon

14. What words would you pass to your childhood self?

Answer: go for it.

15. If you had to do it over again, what would you study in school?

Answer: I would have gotten my PHD in psychology

16. If you could have any accent, which one would it be?

Answer: tie between Scottish and French.

17. Would you rather be married in an arranged marriage or spend the rest of your life single?

Answer: single

18. If you could be someone of the opposite sex for a day, what would be the first thing you do?

Answer: have sex

19. Would you rather have an extra hour everyday or have $40 given to you free and clear everyday?

Answer: extra hour

20. If you were to be stranded on a deserted island with one other person, who would it be?

Answer: one of my best friends. Or of course my kids.

21. What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?

Answer: nothing

22 Would you rather spend 48 straight hours in a public restroom or spend the next 2 months taking only public transportation?

Answer : public transportation

23 What did you learn in school that has proven to be the least useful?

Answer: so many answers so little time…

24 If you had an extra hour every day, what would you do with it?

Answer : meditate

25 Would you rather lose your sense of taste and small or lose all of your hair?

Answer: cant decide.

26 If you could invent something, what would it be and why?

A head strap for children who fall asleep in front facing child seats. ( I sense a con)

27 Would you rather have more than 5 friends or fewer than 5 friends?

Answer : more than 5

28 What stands between you and happiness?

Answer: fear

29:If today were to be your last day in your country, what would you want to do?

Answer: Eat at In N Out.

30: Would you rather lose all of your old memories, or never be able to make new ones?

Answer: lose all my old ones

31 What was the last thing you got for free?

Answer: Christmas present

32 Would you rather be extremely attractive or be married to someone who is extremely attractive?

Answer : be attractive

33: What do you want to be remembered for?

Answer: how I helped change lives.

34 Would you rather have $50,000 free and clear or $1,000,000 that is illegal?

Answer: $50,000

35 If you could trade lives with one of your friends, who would it be?

Answer: Jen, heiress to a soy fortune

36: Would you rather discover something great and share it? Or discover something evil and prevent it?

Answer : evil

37 What movie deserves a sequel?

Answer: Interstellar

38 If you could see 24 hours into the future, what would you be doing?

Answer: nothing different

Now for me, these questions seem really vapid and completely useless.

They’re not going to tell me how you handle stress, what you react badly to, what makes you feel loved. What you find really important in life.

It’s really interesting to me what we consider intimacy, and how different those definitions are.

See , these questions are still focusing on outside stuff. Who we appear as. Surface level information that is just deeper than the most shallow of levels.

What questions do I think help us truly get to know someone, or at least a lot more than we usually would on a couple of dates?

What questions do you think help us get to know each other ?

Here are mine.

1. Do you believe in god?

Answer: yes, I do, but after a long long internal conflict that I’m still conflicted about.

1. What religion do you consider your beliefs closest to?

Answer: Spiritalism

1. What is your definition of respect?

Answer: when someone does not appeal to my ego, when someone is authentic with me. When someone does not go out of their way to hurt me. When someone cares about what is important to me.

1. What’s the single most important aspect you have to have in your platonic relationships?

Answer: Honesty

1. Have you ever stolen anything from anyone ?

Answer: No, never. Not intentionally. I have borrowed things without asking — when I was younger. From my closest friends.

1. Can you laugh at yourself?

Answer: Yes.

1. How many issues are “untouchable” in you? That I cant joke about, that I can’t make light of?

Answer: None , although I have been known to react badly to people that joke about domestic violence.

1. What are those issues, that you can’t joke about ?

Answer: Domestic Violence, because I was in an abusive relationship at one time. But I am not going to mad at you, so much as mad that you don’t care enough to learn about it.

1. Are your feelings facts?

Answer: No. My feelings are the most temporary things about myself , they change with the trade winds.

1. Are mine?

Answer: No. I will treat yours as amusements that can change in a heartbeat because they are and usually do.

1. What is your biggest pet peeve in people as far as personality?

Answer: Critics. I do not like critical people.

1. What is your purpose ?

Answer: To learn how to love people.

1. Do you think being honest can be rude if there is no intentional rudeness behind it?

Answer: No. I expect honesty, so be careful with what you say, I will hold you to it, unless you admit you changed your mind about it or lied. I also wont add anything else to what you said , or imagine details that you didn’t say. I will listen to the words you use and that will be all I hear.

1. What do you want out of a potential relationship ?

Answer: Safety/ trust- I need to trust you. Trust you to be cool in hot situations. Trust you to be kind to people. Trust you to be honest. Trust you to make things better . Not worse. Trust you to make things more comfortable not uncomfortable. Trust you to stay when it’s hard. That kind of trust. Although I know that I can’t , fully trust in those things that serve me, like the staying part. I have to only trust people to be human, I can’t expect them to be more than that. People are free to do what they want and you are too. I guess my ideal relationship I can trust in that way. To stay. To keep my secrets. To honor my weaknesses. To not stomp on my soft parts. But I would never demand that. I would never expect that. You would have to want to give that to me.

1. What’s the most important thing you give to people you love that isn’t material ?

Answer: Purity of intention ,thought and feeling. What I give and feel isn’t based on self. It’s free. It’s without guilt, shame or caveats. You owe me nothing. I am not trying to position you for my gain or emotional security . . I don’t plan things out. I am not three steps ahead of you. I am right now. Nothing I do has a hidden agenda.

1. What’s the most important thing they can give you?

Answer: the same.

1. What do you hate about relationships ?

Answer: Truly? I hate how fucked up most people are, how selfish. How immature. It all usually comes out more with time.

1. What do you love about them?

Answer: The Companionship

1. What are the things that you need to do for yourself to feel your best ?

Answer: Meditate, need time alone. I need space to make mistakes, I need space without any hooks in me. I don’t ever want to feel obligated to you ..

1. What were your parents like? How did they make you feel when you were little?

Answer: Educated, successful. Driven. Perfectionists. They made me feel safe and fearless. My mom sometimes made me feel shame.

1. What are your relationships with your siblings like? What were they like when you were growing up?

Answer: Loving, friendly and wonderful. For my entire life. My best friends.

1. What do you think about people that have sex right away?

Answer: I don’t.

1. Do you like porn? Do you watch it ? How often ?

Answer: No. I don’t hate it, but i think porn is toxic for relationships and makes men bad lovers… well at least the ones who don’t watch it are all better lovers ( unless you watch it with a partner during sex)

1. Are you a dominate or submissive lover, or in relationships?

Answer: Submissive. I am an alpha female who is totally submissive with men I am in love with. I could never see myself with a man who I didn’t respect enough to not be submissive with. I do believe that men need that, and deserve it. There are differences between us. I am really traditional that way. Plus love to me is giving, not getting. Constant state of generosity and forgiveness..Although, when I am done, I will never answer to you again.

24. What are your hobbies ?

Answer: Salsa Dance, Drama- Method Acting, Art, Writing, Studying random things. Meditation, magic.

I like my questions a lot better as far as getting to know your compatibility with people and really a deeper level of understanding them.

I think of course you can’t ever get to know who someone truly is, or how they operate with people till you’ve been around them for a while.

Why?

Our levels of honesty differ, greatly.

Our answers will give you an idea about our willingness to get honest or our definition of honesty.

Some of us have an idea about who we are that has nothing to do with the reality of who we are. In fact , most people that I have met , have a distinct and huge disconnect between what they think of themselves and who they actually are in other people’s eyes. So questions like these are totally useless, and misleading.

Most people haven’t focused too much on their egos, or level of humility , which would be their ability to see themselves as others see them. Good and bad. Humility is understanding how you affect people . Being modest and acting like you don’t love or appreciate yourself isn’t humility. It’s bloated ego. It’s still focusing on yourself and wanting to feed that ego.

Having a clear idea of what you’re good at, and who you are , and not being ashamed of it, isn’t arrogance either.

It’s a shame really that we weren’t taught to examine these things at an early age. To place importance on our spiritual growth. Our soul. Our spirit.

For some of us, life is a surface venture. It only goes so deep. We only go so deep..

And that leaves us feeling incomplete and like we never really lived at all.. and some of us adjust to that level of awareness and we train ourselves to see anything beyond where we are willing to go as weakness or worse, sickness.

For those people that pride themselves on their emptiness, the only true moments they have are when they stare at themselves in the mirror.. they live whole lifetimes in lies. In images projected of who they think they ought to be.

Their relationships consist of other images , that compliment their images.

How many of us have a plethora of friends, from all walks of life, all colors, all socioeconomic statuses, all kinds of people?

It’s telling isn’t it , that most of us have the same friends in different bodies. Because we aren’t really friends with anyone , we are using them to reinforce our ideas about ourselves. Our friends, like our wives and husbands, like our girlfriends and boyfriends feed our egos. Strengthen our ideas about ourselves. Our idea being the image that we promote of ourselves and in turn , we do the same for them.

How many of us are willing to have relationships with people who actively disagree with us? Who challenge us? Who think and believe totally differently than we do?

Why have we been made to believe that , in itself is unhealthy? What is it in us that can’t accept that everyone is different , in fact supposed to be? Why is that offensive to us? What is offended in us?

Relationships are complicated.. and they can be extremely easy and stress free too and at the same time.

I know that the single most important thing I do to cultivate them is be who I am. Is to be honest. To drop the image I want you to believe in, and become the authentic self. The more authentic I am, in fact , is directly dependent on the amount of intimacy I will cultivate within those relationships.

So for people that have never been passionately in love , they have one problem. They cannot reveal who they truly are to another human being.

Most define love as , is just a person who makes you feel good. People can convince themselves of all sorts of insanity, if someone makes them feel good about life and themselves. While most of them haven't the slightest clue that they’re not really in love with anyone , that what they feel is actually all ego and self motivated.

When we truly love people , we love them when they are not making us happy. When they aren’t doing what we want them to do. When they aren’t serving us or our egos.

It’s funny that society has taught us that those relationships are unhealthy.

Sure, some of them are unhealthy, but there is a huge difference in someone being authentically who they are and someone dishonoring who we are.

We have placed so much importance on ego, that when someone hurts our ego, they are sick or wrong. When really our ego is the number one thing that is preventing us from truly living a full life. A passionate life. A real, authentic life.

When you hold yourself back, why? Afraid of what people will think of you?

Afraid that people won’t like you? Won’t judge you?

Why wont you say what you truly think and feel?

You wont risk your image.

Isn’t that more a true arrogance than modesty?

Also interesting to note that real relationships don’t pay attention to our egos. When you’re with your closest friends, your hair comes down. They tease you, you say what’s on your mind and your friends do too. My closest friendships are like family. I am 100% my self.

Something else worth examining is why we base our self worth on the amount of approval we get .

That is some really twisted shit when you think about it.

The one thing I do know is, the more you care about people approving of you, the more upkeep to the image.. the more image based you are. Meaning essentially the less honest you are. The less worthy of approval you actually are. At least, from my vantage point.

Making society a complete conundrum.