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.

Time travel.

I'm obsessed with time travel.

One of my running jokes with a friend is that we're time travelers. Half of my favorite video games, books, and movies involve some form of time travel. I like time travel so much, I'm going to list all the time travelling media I consume in one post by category (since I can't remember them all at once and this is probably the only post where it would be relevant enough to keep track):

[S] = Split Timeline Theory (any changes made in the past create a new timeline based on that change, so that the future can't be changed for the time traveller, only for the inhabitants of the new timeline)
[X] = "It is Fate" (the past can't be changed, any attempt to prevent past events is thwarted somehow)
[B] = Butterfly Effect style time travel (everything in the past effects the future, you can prevent your own birth, etc., opposite of Split Timeline Theory)
[*] = Special Rules Time Travel (time travel is magic, the rules about time travel are very loose or different e.g. in Groundhog Day, the main character relives only one day over and over, or in Radiant Historia, events done in one timeline affect the other in inconsistent ways)

Movies/Shows:
The Butterfly Effect [B]
Groundhog Day [*]
Back to the Future [B]
Dragon Ball Z [S]
Star Trek [B]
Galaxy Quest [B][*]
Lost in Space [B]

Games:
Chrono Trigger [B]
Radiant Historia [S/B][*]
Ocarina of Time [B][*]
Majora's Mask [*]

Books/Comics:
The Time Machine [X]
The Dark Tower [B?][*]
The Adventures of Dr. Mcninja [B]
Restaurant at the End of the Universe [B/*]

That's all I can think of right now...Anyway, there's a point to all this. I'm obsessed with time travel because I think guilt and regret drive a lot of my behavior. I have a tendency to look backwards and want to fix things that can't be fixed. It's just kind of stunning to me to consider how something so simple as a time travel fixation can come from something so complicated as feelings of regret.

Often times, I can think of several points in my life where I know if I had just been a little more patient, or a little more brave, I could have changed someone's life for the better - or my own. It's what makes me so intentional about relationships nowadays. I know I won't get another chance to do things right now. So I make sure people know how I feel. I make sure that every interaction I have with someone is meaningful. I just have to. Or else I'll regret it, because I can't change it. I can't do it again. But with time travel you can...that's what makes me a fan.

I always have to try my best...until I get my own time machine. :)

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to master time.

That THING.

So there was once this THING that I didn't understand before.

This odd depression I noticed people about four years older than me getting. You know, they'd be leaving college. I, a freshman, never understood why they all looked so mopey. They just graduated...they're movin' on. Gettin' a career. What's wrong with that? They should be happy. And it was always only the single ones. Why the single ones?

Now I get it. That thing. It happens when everyone your age is getting married or engaged. It looks like this:

These posts always make me a little self-conscious. I like to pretend I don't care but I do. I know that people will always be quick to jump to conclusions about someone making a post about being single. I do it myself sometimes. Well, here's to posting about what I want to post about anyway. I can't stop you.

Anyway, I know I won't be forever alone and I'm not lonely. That's not the point. The point is, I'm saying something about people. About life - in all its stages. And I'm at that stage where I see everyone around me getting engaged and getting married. And it's hard to be happy for them. It really is.

It'd be a little different if I were in a relationship myself. It truly feels like I did something wrong - because I was with someone for a while, and for the most part I loved it, and almost everyone I know who was in a relationship at that time is now engaged to their significant other. It didn't end that way for me. I dealt the final blow myself.

But when I go to an awesome wedding for two people whom I both look up to so much...and all I can do is clap along with everyone else and pretend I'm not jealous...man, it just sucks. It just does. At a wedding, everyone loves you, sings your praises, eats, dances, and has a blast with you...your best friend at your side, with whom by the end of the night you will be having more than just a little fun. Heck yeah, I want that. At least I'm honest. I don't play along with a pretend utopia where I pretend I don't want what I want. Sometimes that's all I got really going for me - the balls to be honest and say it like I see it.

Balls - there's a word I seem to be using a lot today. That's what it's taken for me to put myself out there. Over. And over. And over again. None of that guarantees someone success. They can do everything right - I can do everything right. And nothing is guaranteed to come of it.

But I gain nothing from just not trying. And I try. I do. And I listen when people tell me to basically not worry about it. To pray. And I do, and and I try. But that's not how this thing works. What I want is something really good - and you can't take the desire for good from me.

My only temptation is to take the easy way out sometimes - and believe me, it's there. Always. But what I keep holding on to is this idea that I must always, always do the right thing. No matter how hard it is. Oh, and I know I fail sometimes, but that is what I always strive for in the end. I want to do what is easy so bad just to feel like my life is going somewhere I want it to for a while.

All I can do is just keep trying as hard as I can to do everything right. Be myself. Keep praying. Trust. Move on. And I do. But it just doesn't get easier.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for ever together.