The characters in your story.

There is very little that makes me angry anymore, but if there is one thing I can count among those things it is ignorance of this fact: you are not just you.

Allow me to explain. Your soul is unique. There is no one else in the world, nor will there ever be, nor has there ever been, anyone just like you. I imagine everyone is on board with this at this point, and there's nothing new. But this is true about everyone else. And God has put the people you know in your life for a reason. Nothing is simply circumstance because everything's existence is contingent on God's benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent being.

There are people in your life right now - unique, irreplaceable, unrepeatable people - that you will never be able to fully understand and fully grasp in your life. I don't care how boring, uninteresting, strange, ugly, etc. you think someone is, they are a universe of possibilities. Everyone you know is fantastically complex and full of potential. That is why abortion is such a plague: it ends people's lives before this potential can be unleashed. Your neighbors are not just your neighbors just as you are not just you. Your neighbors are potential lifesavers, friends, best friends, enemies/difficult people, teachers, mentors, and if they are of the opposite sex, potential spouses.

This is what makes me so angry: potential wasted. Other's lives gone unconsidered. How many people go through a day without considering the characters in their lives? Your life is a story. God is a storyteller and he made you...you have a unique life to live and you're living it whether you like it or not. Don't you ever look around at the characters in your story and realize that these people are in your life for a specific purpose and to fulfill a specific role? I know many who don't. Or at least, they really don't seem to. Everyone you meet is not just a person you have met. They are not just what you think they are. Everyone you meet is potentially the person that will change your life. If you write them off as "just a friend" or "just my sibling" or "just my teacher" or "just somebody" you have closed a door to infinite possibilities.

Nothing makes me so angry as a person set in their ways about the people in their lives. Someone who just knows who somebody is. Here's an easy example for someone my age and I hope I'll be forgiven the cliche quality of it: unrequited love. I'm only speaking of the type where a friend of the opposite sex denies another friend because they're friends. It's like saying "I'm sorry, we can't be friends because we're neighbors." It makes no sense.

That's why I think really hard about who is in my life. I want to know about them, who they are, who they want to be, what they think. I know I suck at it. I know sometimes I'm wrong. Sometimes I make mistakes. But damn it, I try! I try so hard. And I know I can never learn enough about these people I know. I can't figure out how I feel about all of them or what I really ought to do with them and for them. Sometimes I get tired of it, or fail some other way. But at least I'm committed to figuring it out. I can't say everyone gives me the same consideration. I know that sounds like I feel entitled. That's because I do. I feel entitled to the same consideration that I know I will probably not get. Perhaps this is probably a fault. But I know this is how I see things and I can't change that until I see how it's not true.

I'm so tired of seeing people going through their lives without asking the important questions: who am I and what am I doing? Having a job can never be as important as putting your resources to good use. Having a social life can never be as important as seeking to understand and grow with the people you know. Having a family can never be as important as building a family that revolves around love. I am a poor mouthpiece for this knowledge. But I'm willing to say it. I hope that's good enough.

Reader: who are you? To yourself? To me? What could we be? Are we willing to find out? You can count on me to have an emphatic YES to that last question!

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to explore the casting of my story.