so many people tell you that once you get older you will realize how amazing your parents really are and that no matter how much you say you hate them or that they are being unfair and unreasonable, they truly have your best intrests at heart. that is something that simply takes realizing you were wrong, i can sit here and tell my brother and his friends that their parents are just looking out for them because they have been there and they know what it is like, but it doesn't matter what i say, it takes experience for this line of thought to manifest itself to anybody.

i am blessed with so much more than i deserve. i have two parents who love me, a pretty cool brother, a wonderful home, material things beyond what i need, and yet i can be so selfish sometimes that if i take a step back and look at the situation as an outsider i'm disgusted with my actions

i guess it is my fault that i'm like this, but instead of liking somebody as soon as i meet them and waiting until they do something that makes me dislike them, i dislike them until they do something to make me like them. that is probably why i don't have many close friends, i mean i have just as many aquaintances as anybody, but i can't say that i have many actual friends. i guess unfounded arrogance and hubris isn't too appealing.

my plans mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. my plans up until this point have not included a calling from my creator, and that so far has been my problem, i have been concerned with my plans, i still don't know what i want to do or what i'm supposed to do, i know a lot of things that i don't want to do though, so i guess that's a start

when leaders focus on what they are getting out of leading others instead of being concerned with what those that they lead are getting from them, then organizations and groups of all sorts begind to decay. i sure hope, for posterity's sake, that the BAY gets it under control because the way i see it, gravity is taking over in this downward nosedive

late bloomers, in spiritual matters, seem to have an extreme advantage over those who have been conditioned into religion by years of redundancy, not to say that being brought up in the church is by any means a negative experience, but it sometimes makes it harder to have an actual relationship with christ than those who have seen the bottom and now see a light at the end of the tunnel that isn't a train, unfortunately for myself, i had the unique pleasure of experiencing both of those scenarios

ral