ANGELA TRAFFORD To avoid the lies that fill this world, go for a swim

I packed my beach bag and went down to the ocean. The sun lit up the blue of the sky, and the puffy white clouds floated overhead like fluffy castles. Though Florida is a flat land, we do have endless reaches of sky.
Today I went for a swim, or rather a paddle and float in the ocean, and a small school of sizable yellow and white fish flashed around my legs. It was early morning and quiet, and the traveling fish surprised me, so I laughed out loud.
I realized how happy nature makes me and how comforted I am in the presence of nature, animals and plants in all forms.
I had a strange thought: "Fish don't lie."
Then I realized that animals don't lie. I've never heard a bird sing a song that wasn't true, or a cat or dog hide what it really is feeling, or a lion or tiger try to be any less dangerous than its nature compels it to be.
It is only human beings who lie.
I thought of all the lies going around and thought that people lie for their own reasons. Why? It is not for survival. To maintain an image perhaps to oneself and to society?
For instance, people will lie if the truth makes them ashamed. Or people will lie to cover up what they feel or who they are to control others.
I see a decline in honesty and integrity, a blanket of self-deception that keeps us isolated, afraid to reach out and trust, afraid to grow.
Fish, however, do none of this. That is why it is so soothing to swim among them if you can, flapping your limbs happily in the water that is their domain.
Nature is free from greed and seeks only to be itself. Hence the beauty of a human being who is innocent and natural. An authentic person is a pleasure to be around because an authentic person is filled with unconditional love.
A Sufi master once said, "To realize love is to realize God. If we sit before an open fire, it warms us. There is no effort on our part. Those who have realized God are like this fire. Keep in their company."
Go for a swim
Too early we are exposed to the lies that damage and hurt. Too late we realize the value of unconditional love, affection and caring.
If you are tired of the company of people who lie and manipulate, people who seek to destroy instead of grow and build, those who foster discord in the face of harmony, those who foster hatred and deception in place of love -- I recommend you go for a swim.
XAngela Passidomo Trafford authored "The Heroic Path." Her column is distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.."