Better Than (2)

I have enemies, yes. I didn't have enemies for a long while, then I thought what fun it might be to have some. So I got some. And they're great. They really help me with my life.

Okay. That's shit. All of it. I got enemies the old fashioned way-- by getting on peoples' bad sides. Yeah. And some people, it seems, have large bad sides when I'm involved.

Anyway, an enemy of mine told me once, in the guise of helping me out, that my family feels it is better than other families, and this isn't justified. I asked this enemy what they meant by it not being justified, and they said my family is poor, my family doesn't do socially acceptable things (aka, we're inferior), and my family, for the most part, doesn't have an education. Well, we all have an education of some sort, but it's not the standard college education that people really look at when deciding if someone is worth knowing or not.

So my enemy must have felt that my family is completely deluded, believing that they are something when really they're quite the opposite of it. How sad. I can't believe we could be that thick!

Hold on. Since when does an enemy try to help you out?

This calls for further thought. First, are we better than other people? I think the answer is no. Okay, I'm sure the answer is no.

But-- do we think we're better than other people? This is a more difficult question, and it has to be answered by a history lesson. We, for a long time, not because of our family, but because of our "church" environment, were judgmental. Now, the great thing about Christians being judgmental is that they are, but at the same time, they know it's wrong. So I know we were judgmental because I was judgmental, and I felt the guilt, and I hated myself, while at the same time hating others.

Now we're out from that, and free to be who we want to be. I think that my family is just a bunch of really nice, terribly scarred people now. We have problems, but we're learning that we let stuff define us for so long when it never should have defined us, and we're learning to define ourselves as we really are. I don't think we're judgmental anymore.

So never listen to what enemies say about you. When you start letting people read your writing you'll find that there are two kinds of people: The good critics and the bad ones. The good critics will tell you what you're doing wrong, and then they will give you suggestions on how to fix it. The bad ones will tell you that your work is shit. They are poisonous, and if you listen to them, you're hurting yourself big time.

The sad thing is, you'll have to find that out on your own, because enemies rarely come out and say that they're enemies.

Now this is definitely going somewhere...