are you living 'cause you think it's finally over? are you dying 'cause you think you're gonna die...

the most dangerous lesson in life, i believe, is that no good will truly come to us until we realize that our good is doing good for others. at least it's dangerous to everything we think is significant (ourselves; our well-being).

sometimes i feel like i'm on the verge of things so counter-cultural and so unlike the average thought-process of the teenage kid, and it makes me so sad. i feel like i have this grasp of truth and wisdom. not that i am wise, mind you. i will not make that claim. but that i have a picture of what that could be in my life and i find so few who share that.

i know so few willing to give anyone, especially their enemies, the benefit of the doubt. so few willing to see past annoyances and really try and understand the outcast and the murderer and the idiot. so few willing to see that the world is bigger than what's around them and that truth is not something to ever be fully discerned and labeled. so few willing to love what they loathe and fear the most. this is Christ.

but self-love is often comparable to cancer and it rarely finds it's cure.
i'm learning the distance between believing the truth of something and living it. and it's a trek, lemme tell you. but not impossible, either.

i am stuck in a polarity. i'm trying to figure out how to make life have sense despite all humanity's senseless shit. i'm trying to understand death and learn how to not fear it. i'm trying to learn that i have control of my thoughts and fears and anxieties, and that true peace comes in the heart of the storm, rarely in the fear of it.

"the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself"

but what about everything that could happen to me.
what if someone kills me.
what if someone kills my boyfriend.
what if i lose my mind.
what if i die in africa.
what if.
what if
what if.
what the hell if.

Christ is real. perfect love and peace exist and they are waiting for me, they are. they really are. if only i could know this.

i don't know how to deal with everything. it seems as if there's so much to be understood. there's so much wisdom i've yet to gain enough to deal with these massive ugly questions tattooed on my brain. i have to learn how to cope with the reality that i am not safe. nothing is certain and everything is as endless as I make it, and there's so much more to life than death.
i simply don't know how to live outside the illusion of complete security.

i haven't given up on purpose, though. i haven't given up on the notion that everything that seems senseless and unjust and insane on God's part is completely intentional. like i said, i believe on an intellectual level that Christ is real. And if that's true, then all my hopes of goodness and compassion and understanding are very much within reach. and that if those things aren't fulfilled in this life, they'll be fulfilled somewhere else.

man, Christ is real.