The fact that I love to hear this man’s music or see him in a movie is not why I chose the following three quotes. I chose these quotes because they are packed with wisdom. Yes, wisdom. Elvis Presley made some very valid points in these quotes. Just make sure you read my explanation for each quote or you might think I have lost my mind.
Just saying.
You’ll understand what I mean after you read the post.
You Have The Power To Choose
“When things go bad, don’t go with them.” ~ Elvis Presley ~
Whether it is peer pressure, a weak spirit to resist the bad thing, or because you’re very lonely so something/someone is better than nothing/no one, choosing unwisely will lead to unhappiness.
A bad choice is never right. A bad choice will remain bad no matter how you say it, present it, cover it up or hide it. Bad is simply bad.
To illustrate my point, let’s choose something that we can all agree is a bad choice and see if I can make it right.
Ummm…How about beating your spouse. I think we all will agree that domestic violence is bad. If someone beats their spouse, I can’t think of any reason that beating your spouse would be a good thing. No matter how angry you are because your spouse did something that caused you unhappiness, beating them is a poor choice. Domestic violence doesn’t solve anything. It just makes more problems.
According to the quote, “When things go bad, don’t go with them,” we could look at it from both points of view. The person who beats their spouse for the first time, should not see the act of domestic violence as a solution. It is a bad thing that they should not ever repeat. On the flip side, the person being beat should not cover up that they were hurt by their spouse. They should let their spouse suffer the natural consequences for his/her actions. If they cover up the bad thing, the spouse might be more prone to do it again because they got by with the bad thing.
So just because a situation goes bad, you don’t have to keep making it worse by digging a proverbial bigger hole. If you make a poor choice, just suffer the consequences, apologize for your actions and don’t choose anything else that will lead you down that bad path.
Sometimes The Truth Hurts
“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t going away.” ~ Elvis Presley ~
The truth.
The cold, hard truth.
If not the whole truth, at least part of the truth eventually comes out no matter how hard you try to hide it.
Why do you try to hide the truth or not believe the truth?
Sometimes the truth hurts.
Sometimes the truth will rip your heart completely out of your chest. Well, it feels like it rips your heart out of your chest. The pain of the truth can turn your world completely upside down.
After cooking a delicious meal, you might ask your guest, “Did dinner taste yummy?”
If the answer is, “No, I didn’t really like it,” you may be sad, you could feel offended, or you might be hurt that after all the effort it took to prepare dinner, your guest didn’t like the food.
That’s a mild example, but I think it illustrates the point that the truth isn’t always pleasant and can hurt. Some truths that might be very hurtful could include things such as finding out that: your partner is cheating, your child is addicted to drugs, your parents are closet alcoholics, or you have a terminal illness and only have three months to live. All of these things may be true, so facing the truth could cause you sadness and pain.
Sometimes the truth just hurts and there is no way around the pain.
Love Is A Powerful Emotion
“I’d rather go on hearing your lies, than to go on living without you.” ~ Elvis Presley ~
Wait!!!!
What?!
Hold on! Let me explain.
When you love someone, you love them. Since no one is perfect, you know that the object of your affection will make mistakes. Soooooo, you forgive the person you love. You also want to keep the person in your life, so sometimes that skews your view.
Many people will pretend that the lie is the truth or they will just keep forgiving the lie over and over again in order to keep the relationship together. Those people would rather go on hearing the lies than living without the person they love. However, lying is a very bad thing and in the end causes so much more pain that simply telling the truth.
Losing someone you love is very painful. That’s why some people choose to put up with hearing the lies.
I fall somewhere in the middle. I don’t believe the lies, but I tolerate them for a short time or even a long time, but eventually the lies are just too much and then I let go.
Didn’t you ever wonder why I write so much about letting go? Well, now you know that I’m trying to help myself by understanding the wisdom of letting go BEFORE the pain becomes too great. Letting go is applicable to much more than a relationship filled with lies, but it is still the same act and brings about an ache in the heart.
I’m Not Judging
I was rather blunt with the explanation of those three Elvis Presley quotes, but I’m not judging anyone. Only God knows your heart and path. I’m certainly not going to condemn you no matter where your actions are in accordance to the quotes.
Personally, I’ve been all over the map with my choices from one end of the spectrum to the other end.
When things go bad, sometimes I’ve gone with them.
Sometimes I have tried to hide the truth because it will hurt people or I chose not to confront the truth because it was going to hurt me.
I have loved someone so much that I’d rather go on hearing their lies, than to go on living without them. BUT, eventually the lies kill the relationship and I had to let go.
The truth is always the best choice because then you can cope with it, forgive and move forward. Whether you move forward together or agree to move forward apart, the truth makes it so much easier.
See? The wisdom in these quotes is not easy for me. I know it is easy for many of you to make the right choice immediately, but it’s just not that easy for me. When my heart is involved, I struggle. My mind is tormented and my heart continually aches for things to just be good and right.
I have learned from my past, but each lesson was gained after much pain. When I actually have wisdom, it has been very hard earned knowledge.
If you have the power to make it easy on someone by living the wisdom in these quotes, I encourage you to love them and yourself enough to have the strength to do so. Life and love do not have to be so difficult. I think we make it way harder than it has to be.
Thank you Elvis Presley. Thank you very much. 😉
Are these really quotes by Elvis or lyrics he sang in a song? Anyhow, I am glad you wrote this post for two reasons. Number one, as usual, you gave some very good advice and number two it gave me a chance to click on the link “terminal illness and only have three months to live.” Reading your post about your father dying of cancer was very moving.
One was a lyric in a song that Elvis sang.
Nothing is like having a parent die the way Dad did…I still miss him.