Hey y’all! I’ve been thinking about a lot of things recently, and I’m too mentally and physically tired to write short stories for each one, so I’ll just write these pint-sized paragraphs. Sorry if I ramble, or if I bring y’all down!

It’s funny how when I was younger I thought I was older, and all the people I got along with best were older, and now all the opposite is true: I’m shocked at how much I’ve changed now, and younger guys and gals (Mostly gals. Boys, including me, are inherently annoying.) give me so much joy to be around. Not to say that I don’t like kids my age and older. I’m merely pointing out that they’re complicated, confusing, and awkward.

I realize that words seem to be spouting out of my mouth all the time without thought or judgement. This is true – but inside my head, I know beforehand what I’m going to say, even if I don’t think about it. This is why, for me, it’s one of the most exciting things to have a conversation. Even if you know someone to the point of friendly creepiness, you are never one-hundred per-cent sure what someone else is going to say.

If I had three wishes, they would be: 1. Teleportation, 2. Fluency in all languages, 3. This will sound weird , so I will explain. Because I have lived around people that look different than me for my whole life, I know that people are more on guard/confused when talking to people that look different. So, my third wish would be to look like the people where I live.

“Life is short,” people say. I, for one, have rolled my eyes at this. I might live 99 years, like my great-grandmother. But after a couple minutes of thought, I think I know what they mean. Time began thousands, maybe millions, maybe billions ago, whichever you like. Now, how many people die in a thousand years? How many lives begin, tread on, then end in a moment in a thousand years? In a million? Humans are made of flesh, and flesh is made of matter, and all matter wears away eventually. Life is short.

“Without love, I am nothing.” What on earth? How can this be true? Everything I hear says that you are something because you are you. That your uniqueness makes you something. That the aspects of your being (your race, personality, sexuality, ect.) are what make you of substance. Love? Do we really need to love someone? Paul himself, who wrote these words, was a single man his entire life! Is this hypocrisy? I don’t think so. “Which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And [Jesus] said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.'” This is what it means. You can have power, you can be the best version of yourself, you can love who you are, but without an equal (if not greater) love for God and for others, your life means nothing. Life is meaningless without these loves. And I do not dismiss this as easy. No, this, if we commit to it, will be the hardest thing we will ever do. It will last our entire lives. But it won’t be all work, no gain. Some people will hate us when we love them, sure, but the love we give to God will be repaid in infinitely more love, forever. (I might also add that God has loved us even before we loved him, which makes no sense. We’ve done stuff that makes us deserving of Hell every day since birth. So in no way does God owe us anything.)