Mater Dei

I wonder if people realize that you can never change a person. You yourself can never change a person no matter how hard you try. Sure, you can influence them and have an impact on the change they make, but you can never actually change someone.

Sometimes I wish adults knew that when they speak to me.

Yes I know they are just trying to influence me, but shoving their philosophy down my throat is not influencing me in a good way. If anything it influences me in a bad way. I just want to shout at them, "You telling me I'm an awful person and I can only change if I do things your way doesn't help! You're a bad person just as much as I'm a bad person."

When you say you believe one thing and live out your life differently, it has a bad effect on people. They see the hypocrisy in your life and wonder why in the world they would want to be like you. The only effective way to influence other people is to stress the fact that you're imperfect. We all are, so why pretend otherwise? It's enraging!

The other day I was at breakfast with my mother and sister at a Denny's. As we were paying, I saw a very unhappy-looking famaily. There was a mother, a father, three boys, and a girl. The mother looked tired, drained, and annoyeed. The kids looked oblivious to the mother and looked in fear at the father. And the father looked angry, unsatisfied and aloof. On the back of the father's shirt, I saw written, "I am the Devil's advocate. I am the ambassador for sin. The world bows to me and the people tremble at the sound of my voice."

The blunt teenager inside of me wants to scream at him "How lame!" Honestly? You live in a random suburb, you're middle-aged, you're slightly obese and you have four kids! How completely self-absorbed and immature must one be to even give that kind of shirt a second glance in the satan-obssessed store he bought that in.

I've noticed something that scares me to my inner being. These kinds of people are the people who continue to breed, breed, breed. The satanic, the "utterly holy" people who are crazy religious, and the idle people who do nothing and expect to leave an impact on history. These are the kinds of people who breed the most. This guy has four kids. A man I know and his wife have one and they're very lovely and smart and nice people.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, if there is no source of redemption in this horrible, messy, selfish world...

We're all screwed.