Treason

I think I'm starting to have the confidence to approach my questions again.  God knows how I got that back... For too long I had lost the feeling that I am who I need to be.  And, Lord knows, I wasn't.  A lot of people seemed to have advice, advice that probably encouraged me to find my own way more than anything.  I definitely don't take advice well.  I feel like it's all a lie and just a way to dress someone up to look exactly like you.  So, I may not take the advice, but I do take the encouragement- knowing deep down, that it's love that is making them try.  It's love that is opening them up to failure.

The only impression that I get is that the "right" thing is based on nothing more than a set of guidelines to follow.  Guidelines, that it would be awesome if I could follow wholeheartedly, but it's tough.  The greatest conflict in my life comes from knowing the person I am and believing that there is a certain way I should behave; a different, hypothetical, person that I should try to force myself to embody.  And every time I asked "why?" I felt guilty for not taking advice by faith.

I think I realize now that I'm not the kind of person who is going to confine myself to any kind of box, but I don't believe it's best for me to become anything for the sake of anybody else, because that, in itself, might be the greatest betrayal to myself and them.

The road

I don't want to be boring.  I'm doing things to keep up with life, I'm trying to live my life in a way I won't regret.  But life still tends to be so boring.  I think all I'm doing is skimming along the surface of it. Waiting for something deep to come along so I can just fall into it.  It comes, occasionally, and I'm so used to being on the surface of things that I'm scared to dive in- it's like traveling by paved road so much in your life that you have no idea what it's like to make your own way, so your scared to.  I mean, I'm scared to.  At least I still have a hunger for awesomeness in my life.  That's the only thing that'll conquer my fear of stepping off the road.

Journal

Something about writing completely exposed for other people to see makes it so much harder for me to write.  Writing in a journal is like thinking for me, I'm perfectly fine with exploring new territory; taking wrong turns in hopes of a right one, branching out.  It's easier on a blank page, in a world with no consequence.  Any time when I'm with people, all I get are walls of conflicting ideas and emotions.  It takes rationality out of the equation-  I mean, it teaches a very valuable lesson, that people can't and shouldn't always be dealt with as if they are rational.  I suppose I do have to justify a statement like that.  People are rational, too an extent, we don't always listen to reason because, let's face it, we are so proud we have to learn it ourselves, or we just don't want to go back on our previous beliefs, or, the more likely reason, we know how much we don't know and that keeps us from committing to anything.  I'm not a psychologist, I know that- I know how many loopholes there are in every argument I make.  I just want to be encouraged to think, and to encourage others to do the same.  I've been learning a lot in school; it seems like I'm cramming information into my head at so fast a rate that my understanding of it all is struggling to keep up.  I don't like that, I don't like that at all.  I'm missing out on the most fundamental part of the growing process.  I'm missing out on the lines that connect the dots.

I'm missing out on the reasons.  The puzzle pieces that make a person able to act rationally.  You see, if someone doesn't have a reason to believe something, all they have is a crude outline of what an idea should look like.  A framework for belief that is missing out on crucial, load bearing principles.  I'm not willing  to accept an idea without reasons.  I understand faith I suppose- and most people who know me know I've been one for faith.  This is my understanding of it.  Faith accepts an idea, a framework for one to go by- this faith can be in anything, from science to religion to Ozzy Osborne or Judas Priest, faith accepts that a way to live is right and in living it, the gaps are filled in, the puzzle pieces are placed and the picture becomes a whole lot more clear.

Isn't that how it's supposed to work?  I wish I could convince myself to go all the way.  I wish I knew what "all the way" meant.  I don't know what the future holds, or what God's plan should look like.  The Bible gives a good framework and I'm not saying that the Bible is the reason why I hesitate to follow God. It's my interpretation, it's going into a conversation thinking that you're doing something loving to them by telling them about Jesus, and failing to even show love for them.  To only ostracize people with an idea? That should be criminal.  To dedicate myself to something that I so poorly live out, that makes no sense to me, I suppose that's why it's so hard for me to love, because there's nothing I'm pursuing, love can't just be a framework, it can't just be a vague idea.  Love has to be a gap you fill in.  An action you only learn with life.  For anyone, not knowing an idea is like not seeing a bullet coming, it's going to shatter whatever delicate structure you've got going on.  I know how much I don't know about love, and every time an experience comes that I don't expect, it shatters my framework.  I'll admit I'm tired of putting up a fight against structures in my own mind, I'm tired of learning things that change how I see life.  But, I'm even more tired of hiding behind words that don't have a reason to back them up.  I'm tired of not asking why anymore and I'm certainly tired of having no defense for the same question.  We are nothing when we hide behind words with no practical, logical reason, and even though changing is tough, I think we all know, sometimes, when it comes to our beliefs, our only reason to believe anything is because we're afraid of all we don't know.  I'm learning to allow myself to change, to lose nothing but to gain what I've experienced and fit it in with what I already know.

I want to learn to love again.  I think my idea of it has just been broken and I'm too tired to put it together again.  I don't trust what God labels "the world" and I don't trust my interpretation of what God says is true, I'm at a love standstill, and I'm probably sitting down, even though I don't want to admit it.  It's a love sitstill.