Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 13:05:52 +1030 (CST) From: Grey Wolf Subject: [Malks] Sigh. > > BEST years of your life are when your growing? You must have had much > better teen years than I or anybody I know ever did. That was a time for > indecision, confusion, and catastrophic change. I remember it as a time of > insecurity. I also remember having a good time, but it can't touch being > an adult. I wouldn't be younger than 23 for any amount of money. After the > insecurity of being a teenager, you get to be a legal "adult" this is the > time where you expect to be taken seriously by other adults, but you find > that they look down at you. Then as you get a little older--you begin to > understand why they were looking down at you. Other than honor and > integrity and a large loving and forgiving heart--I can't think of much > that I believed at the age of 15 that I still hold true. Life is a > journey--if you still have the same beliefs at 25 that you had at 15, then > you aint goin'nowhere fast. > Hope this didn't sound too negative. I love life right now and just can't > picture doing that again. Lets see, blowing my brains out without using a gun? (Look mum, no hands!) I don't think that qualifies as a good teenage years. I still don't think you've understood what I meant. I didn't mean best as in enjoyable, or happy, or good or any of that crap. I meant best as in most productive. And the beliefs I was talking about, I didn't mean to say that the shallow reflection of your beliefs we call 'religon' or 'faith' were set in stone. Hell, I've known people to change religions overnight. But the important parts that are YOU at the core level (namely honour, integrity, and love) haven't changed by your own admission. It is these core things that make up you. No matter what religion you follow, no matter how hetic or confusing your life gets, these key parts of you will not change, and so you will not change. For example, which is worse: a person who justifies killing with religion or a person who just kills because they thought the other guy (or whatever) was an asshole. Either way both of them believed at the core that it was okay to kill someone you didn't like. Totally different religions, and totally different excuses but the core reason is the same. Now having said that, now is probably the time to make the exception. (Yep folks, I'm going to disprove an arguement I just won) The one exception is when the person undergoes some /EXTREMELY/ traumatic experience that shatters everything they didn't just believe in, but /knew/. Since these knid of experiences are rare, especially for older people who have settled into their way of life (no matter how chaotic it may appear to be), very few people change. And before you all get up and cry that this has happened to you, poor you, oh poor poor you, and so you are exempt for qualifing as a person. (vampire or OCC) wiise up. Experiences like this are either terminal or a complete turn around for that person. Rare is the person who can claim to have undergone an experience and still maintain that they change all the time. Most people who experience these sort of events are usually quiet about them, becasue they are personal experience. What brings me to the centre of my soul might just make someone else laugh. And just for the slow ones among you, that means if you write to me telling me dramitically how you are so good because you have undergone said experience and are no worse for the wear, I will laugh in your face and tell you to get a life. (Apart from the MMN) So if you do want to cry, consider yourself flamed ahead of time and be done with it. > Bere Dont take it personally Bere. I guess it's not your fault that you're not in the position to understand somethings.(Your gain, not mine) Perhaps in a few more months of /reading/ malk mail, not just forming sentances and paragraphs; you will come to see reality as it more so often is. Then again, I could just be on too much of a roll to see what I am crushing beneath the wheels of survival. Grey Wolf - Shallow definitions benefit no-one, - Deep definitions do not exist, - There is only oneself.