connection

Learn me right–1.

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Today I started thinking about the years I spent sitting in Youth Group feeling frustrated.

I’ve started going to a new youth group by the way, which appears to be much better.

But I always wanted to know why youth don’t seem to take their faith or the bible seriously.

The conversations I’ve had with other teens about passages in the bible that aren’t often talked about, well their ignorance or indifference is surprising.

But over the years I’ve sat in Church services that talked to grown men and women pretty much how the youth leaders talk to their youth, only the adult services focus more on sin.

as any Christian teen over here can tell you, Youth Groups tend to cover purity, identity, and not behind addicted to technology by being a good example to your friends.

And all those are great messages, which I have needed and still need. The problem was, those messages should be seasonal, or every so often, but they made up the bulk of my youth group teaching.

As a homeschooler, I always felt like it was to easy for me. No one talked about books much, no one watched the same movies as I did, often enough; and no one expected me to retain much of what I heard, or to do the ridiculously easy assignments.

People could come to our youth leaders with their problems, but they couldn’t seem to actually follow their example. Why?

I don’t have a magic answer, but let me tell you about a contrasting experience I had.

When I went on my missions trip, the other teens were the most well-behaved, respectful bunch of peers I’ve probably ever been around. Except other homeschoolers. (Sorry, but it’s true.) We all wanted similar things, we all took pains to be nice to each other and to serve the people of Cambodia well. A lot of them also ate bugs, but hey, that’s normal in Asia. (And most other places except America.)

Phones were still a bit of an issue, but they at least kept it to a minimal. what made this group so different?

Well, the sad thing is, it didn’t stay that way entirely. Once we all go back, all of us hit some heavy obstacles in our everyday lives. Some of us floundered, others kept right on swimming. I admire one member of the group in particular for continuing to be of service to the people around them. I myself had to deal with a lot even the very day I came home.

I’ve never been common, and I don’t think anyone else would exactly fit the societal mode either, so what caused some of us to lose our grip?

My theory is it’s the same thing that plagues most other young people, here and in every place where kids have the opportunity to d more than survive.

You see, there’s a principle of life. Your situation is not what matters, it’s your outlook.

The fact is, no matter how hard our life is, we choose whether we live just for survival or not.

I have known plenty of people who are just trying to get through every day, whether its’ doing their school, their work, or possibly actually trying to keep food on their plate.

And like or not, when you live like the day-to-day challenges are the worst thing in your life, you have adopted an attitude of survival.

It’s not a good way to live, because it’s selfish, and it makes your vision very narrow.

They wonder why teens don’t care about church, it’s probably because they have learned to survive without it.

Personally, if I hadn’t found a good church to go to, I’d be at the end of my rope right now. I need the encouragement of being around other people who believe, people who I can sing to God with and they wont’ think I’m crazy. Non-believers take that kind of freedom for granted, I think. But it’s harder to find than it seems.

They say that the church is not relevent. That may true of some churches. But the ones I have gone to are usually quite relevant to some people. They feed the homeless, provide free childcare in a safe environment for busy parents. provide na alternative to secular culture; and give Christians a place to feel they are understood.

The church is much more than a safe haven of course, but the one problem is, very few teenagers appreciate having a safe haven unless they are in big trouble.

The teens I’ve known who came to church consistently were the ones with the most unstable lives, often enough. Sometimes they were more committed. Sometimes they were pastor’s kids and took more of an interest because of that. But I never heard any one of them say they came to church because it was a challenge, or because they felt it was dangerous.

That is, in my opinion, a huge percent of the problem.

we’ve taught kids that they can be anything, and prepared them for an adventure when they are young, but when they are teens, we start saying “Only a few more years of school.” There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, in other words. I don’t blame anyone for hating public school as I can’t imagine going to it myself, but church is treated the same way.

And I know you may not go to church and so may not care, but trust me, this is affecting you too. What do you get when a whole generation starts living just to survive. I almost prefer the past generations who lived for fun or to make a wealthy lifestyle, kids have grown up hearing that is not the most important thing, but they have no heard what is.

Or maybe they just don’t believe it anymore.

I am not letting teens off the hook. No one can make you stop caring except you.

But I’ll have to continue this in part two. Until then–Natasha.

Strange Magic

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Since I just recently re-watched this movie, I thought it’d be a good chance to do a review on it, especially since there are only two main positions on it.

People either love this movie or hate it, very few are indifferent.

A lot of folks think this movie was George Lucas’ big joke at both our own and fairytales’ expense. The ending scene may well leave all the audience turning to their friends and asking “What the heck did I just watch?”

The movie seems so obviously bad that it’s baffling how many people left positive reviews for it on Amazon. Why?

Well, it may surprise you that after stating all that, I actually like this movie. You’ve probably never heard of it. I never had until a chance line in a review of a different movie, and the clips that started showing up on YouTube’s homepage.

I will not deny it is the weirdest movie I have ever seen all the way through. It beats out “Willy Wonka and the Cholate Factory.” It is not weird in the way that I’d say was wrong. It has no questionable scenes, no creepy stuff, no inappropriateness, beyond what will go over kids’ heads and is hardly even a thing to adults. It’s still arguable that its even inappropriate because I think circumstance counts for a lot.

So, that said, what is this movies big flaw that baffles its audience?

It’s really hard to pinpoint. The weirdest is scattered all over the place, but it mainly is in the awkwardness.

Maryanne, our main character, is socially awkward. I find it quite believable and in some ways too familiar for comfort; but that is the point. Maryanne is very human, despite being a fairy, and often doesn’t know how to handle herself unless it’s at the end of a sword. She is constantly shocking her father and sister with how rude or indifferent to people’s opinion she can be.

That said, Maryanne never does anything that can be considered truly wrong in the course of the film. she is painfully honest, fiercely loyal, and her chief flaw is being merciless to her ex, Rolland. Though he really leaves her no choice, and she never hurts him beyond what the situation calls for.

What makes up the rest of the awkwardness in this movie is the use of the love potion. It will make any two creatures fall in love with each other, though it seems only to work if they are of the opposite sex. It also only works on the one it’s dusted onto, so it can lead to one-sided, over-the-top obsession. An imp scatters the potion all over random creatures, leading to some very repulsive matches. It makes your stomach turn, and Maryanne’s as well.

But I can’t call that a flaw in the plot itself because the whole idea is supposed to be love shouldn’t be forced. We are supposed to be disgusted with how the misuse of this potion can ruin people. Maryanne’s sister spends a large portion of the movie in love with someone she’d normally be terrified of. Bog, the king of the Dark Forest, used the potion at one time, to no affect, and later realizes how wrong it was of him to do so.

Definitely the best thing this movie has going for it is Maryanne and Bog. Maryanne proves able to be very un-judgmental when she learns what Bog did in the past and why he hates love, she even sees herself in that and sympathizes. Bog also teaches her how to see the Dark Forest as a place that is more challenging than her own, and not actually evil, just different.

That is the powerful thing in the jumbled world of this movie. Because the audience perceives everything how Maryanne does, we see the forest as scary, evil, ugly, and hostile. But when she learns to see the beauty in it, we do too. Also we learn that sometimes ugly things are still amazingly complex. Like a centipede. Plus, some things will only grow in the Dark Forest, or on the line between it and the Lighter one, because some species need it cool and damp. This is stuff we have to remember as we watch, because everything in the dark forest looks the way it does because that makes it blend in with its surroundings. The creatures are ugly because they have to hide in the uglier places.

While I don’t think embracing ugliness is wise, it is wise to realize that different places look different for a reason.

There’s no racism message in this film, it’s more “don’t judge a book by its cover.”

But the best massage is that true love prevails. Maryanne goes from being a person who goes by appearances to being a person who doesn’t care about them. This has its drawbacks, as she is rude at times, and also impulsive; but it makes her a perfect match for Bog who is tired of being simpered to and having everyone afraid of him. Bog on the other hand rapidly goes from being bitter and somewhat evil to being heroic because he’s finally met someone who understands him.

The message is not that it’s okay to be evil, but that love can change you. Also, that love will accept you how you are. None of our characters are perfect. But only Rolland, the guy who thinks he is perfect, is the one who never changes. Everyone else grows and learns from their mistakes. But they also all learn that perfect or not, they can be loved. just for who they are. It’s a surprisingly sweet message in a very weird package.

So what’s the verdict?

I like this movie because only a move this weird could make you get past weirdness and love it anyway. In a sense, if you like the movie, you’ve learned what it was trying to teach you.

But…

If you can’t stand singing, especially if the songs are all unoriginal popular songs, most of them from the seventies, then this is not your movie.

All the songs fit the story, but one or two are completely unnecessary, and only one or two feel entirely natural in the movie.

And if the awkwardness of the dialogue is going to turn you off, than be warned, it is awkward most of the time.

The voice acting is sometimes surprisingly moving, but many times the characters make it weird, and to some people it will feel flat.

Also, the movie can grow on you, but it can also shrink.

Don’t watch it with anyone who hates musicals. Their scorn will  absolutely ruin it for you. Unless you are able to completely block it out.

But if you can get past all that and dig deep you’ll find that with all its flaws there’s something very charming about this film. Which seems to be the whole point. And for the rest, blame George Lucas’ weird imagination and not me. Or the movie itself.

Until next time–Natasha.

P. S. ( I hope I didn’t lose respect from anyone for liking this. You have to laugh at yourself, ladies and gentlemen.)

Not a single day.

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I have heard it said that you can live 40 days without food, 3 days without water, but you can’t live a single day without hope.

And the first time I thought, “that doesn’t make any sense.”

But I’ve since realized there is something in that saying.

Depending both on your personality or on your history, hope may either seem like a weak, wimpy word; or it may seem like a word to depend upon. Maybe it is neither.

Perhaps the worst thing is to not think about hope at all, but I’ve been there, I didn’t used tot ink about needing hope. I think because I had such a comparatively smooth life, and hope was a  thing I associated with those who were facing a battle, at the end of their rope, and waiting desperately for assistance.

That’s another assumption we make about hope. We see it as a last reserve. Something people only need when they can’t take care of themselves.

But what if it really is something we need every single day?

I mentioned in my previous post about this man who said Earth might be hell. I think it’s worth noting that in hell, by definition, there is no hope.

In the book of 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13, Paul ends his amazing description of love, with the words “Now abide faith, hope, and love (or charity.)” But he mentions hope before then, when he says Love “hopes all things.”

I would draw from this that there is no love without hope.

I have also heard it said, in a movie, that there is no love in hell.  There’s no faith either.

Forgive  me for going on about this, but the idea that earth is hell may be one of the most disturbing I have ever heard.

But sadly, if a person believes that, it will become true for them. Not because whatever we believe is true, but because a belief like that is a trap; a prison.

It’s like C. S. Lewis pointed out in “The Great Divorce,” those who will see the light, will, at the end of their days, say “I was always in heaven.” Because heaven will affect all their past, and make it a part of itself. (He explains it better.) But those who never left darkness will say “I was always in hell,” and both will be correct.

Some people say heaven and hell are states of mind, and they are right in one way. Your state of mind will determine which you will be in.

The word hell is tossed around a lot now, to the point where some believers won’t even use it because people think it’s a cuss word. Well, I won’t go into that issue, but whatever hell is used for, it is still an idea in people’s minds.

Heaven I don’t hear as much. I think the words we use reflect our outlooks, and that is scientific, by the way, and the increase of hell and decrease of heaven signifies something.

Hell is all about despair. “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” As Dante put it. That man who made that remark I mentioned above used Dante’s Inferno as an example. He thought the hell described there was like earth.

Are we born into hopelessness?  Well, it’s not like I’ve never come close to thinking so.

Heaven, on the other hand, is what we hope for. The opposite of hell in every way, but it is more than that too. For though heaven can swallow up hell, hell can never swallow heaven. To make things evil is always to make them smaller and weaker than they were before.

The trouble is, on Earth, it may look to us like evil is stronger. Many people have bought into that lie, and I don’t exactly blame them, because if you cannot hope in something greater, then what is to stop you from succumbing to the despair of the world?

Evil scares us because it seems to have no limits. Good does, we think.

I’ve heard just the opposite, that good has no limits.

This difference will radically affect one’s world view. If good is greater than evil, there is hope. If it is weaker, there is none.

I am bothered by the increasing amount of movies, books, and even teachings, that evil is stronger, more persistent, and more clever than good. You’ve seen it too, no doubt.

Historically, it is not true. Evil has many times been in power over whole countries, but good persisted in spite of all that.

We have reason to hope; not in people, though people will sometimes show us the Divine in their example; but in God.

I hope in God not because I never have been let down, but because He has not let me down.

I hope because I have to. It is true, I can live a single day without it.

Because to do anything, to be anything, to risk anything, I have to hope. So, it is true, to really live, you have to hope.

Remember in my post I really lived, when I mentioned that song, and how the dad in it is saying “Hope” constantly. Because we cannot make children choose wisely, but we can hope they will, and teach them to while we can.

I use hope every time I post, I hope that it will help somebody. I hope that I am saying the right things. I hope I am learning as I go. I can’t at any given time be certain of the outcome of it, but I hope. And the hope is starting to pay off.

It’s a truth even phycologists have noticed, hope, a. k. a. thinking positive, will affect your life.

It is hard to do if you’re in a rut of the opposite kind of thinking, but it is worth it to extend the effort.

Until next post–Natasha.

Great Examples, Poor Solutions.

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I notice people seem to like reading about superheroes, and that’s great, because so do I. They are an interesting subject.

Though if I’m not mistaken, superheroes are a development of the past 50-60 years, which is an extremely short time in the grand scope of things.

I wonder why that is, the idea of superheroes is such an instant win among the old and young alike, why is it so recent?

The answer just occurred to me as I was writing the above, it’s because superheroes are a new type of an old idea.

The idea that there could be beings like humans, only with more power, more goodness, more courage.

And from this naturally springs the idea that there could be beings similar to that, but evil instead of good, and the good and evil would fight each other.

The strange thing is that no matter what form this idea had taken, whether of ancient Greek and Roman gods; or the spirits of tribal religions; or just the elements themselves having a form and personality; the inevitable theme of these good and evil beings fighting for control of mankind is introduced.

Why is that?

And are superheroes really a new thing in that sense? People love them because there are few story forms that make the battle between good and evil seem more epic than a superhero form does.

People become crazily enamored of  supers, to the point where it is hardly even fiction to them anymore. They even try to be in that world as much as possible. Via fan fiction, fan clubs, and the catch phrases.

“I know all your moves; your crime fighting style; favorite catch phrases; everything! I am your number one fan!” (Buddy to Mr. Incredible.)

Poor Buddy.

But what happens to him? If you’ve seen The Incredibles, than you know Buddy gets rejected by his hero, and it leads him to become a villain, which is cliché, but it works in this film because Buddy literally wanted to be Mr. Incredible’s sidekick. Buddy bitterly says that “You can’t count on anyone, especially your heroes.”

Am I the only one noticing that the fan–superhero relationship is slowly becoming a love–hate one?

It’s like, dare I say, we are disillusioned. More and more movies are exploring the weaknesses of being superheroes, the Batman films are especially dark.

On the other hand, there are those who remain fiercely loyal despite the growing moral dilemma attached to even having supers exist. Explored, ironically, by The Incredibles, and later Captain America: Civil War, and I’m sure you could think of a few others, even Justice League Unlimited got into it.

The conclusion always is, we need superheroes, because we have super villains. But maybe it is too much to hope that our supers will remain heroes on their own, as Civil War suggests.

I am not necessarily against that movie or any of these movies, on the contrary, I love The Incredibles. That movie makes a pretty good case for having supers, without idolizing them.

Still…

In my personal experience, the action and adventure of the superhero genre is awesome, and you want more and more, but when it comes time to reflect on it and evaluate what you saw, finding the point can be difficult.

I’m well aware, not everyone cares. Particularly the people who don’t like the genre that much. but I suspect the reason they don’t like it is because it often has no clear cut message.

But I do care about there being a point. And it bugs me when the screenwriters aren’t really sure of what they are saying.

The same problem occurs every time. There’s a huge conflict, a lot of tension for the protagonist, the villain makes an evil speech about their depressing world view; and very rarely now does the hero make any comeback except a one liner.

Does anyone else notice it often seems like the hero doesn’t even know what they think, just that they need to defeat the bad guy?

There’s a clear message here, evil is complex, good is simplistic.

Well, maybe good is simple, but that doesn’t mean it should be vague.

In the end, it’s just the heroes view against the villains, and the normal civilians have no perspective at all, they just go with whichever side. We want the hero to win, but we enjoy the villain just as much.

I could start naming names, but it is unnecessary and I’ll only make somebody mad. But I’m sure examples came to mind.

What is so scary to me is that I could bring up this point and get absolutely no concern from the person I was taking to.

Are good and evil equal? No.

It is true, we still want good to win; but we are diving deeper and deeper into evil, because it takes more and more to make us afraid, to get our hearts pounding, to make us feel the suspense.

What was horror back in the sixties is laughable now.

Evil has not changed, but the amount of it we willingly expose ourselves to has.

This is not to knock superhero fiction, I think it can be awesome, but it is not awesome when the heroes are shown less and less respect.

On a final note, people grow disillusioned with supers because they are not perfect, but they seemed to be, at their conception. The Superman of the fifties and sixties had no faults. It was annoying.

Supers may be, as my dad says, the ultimate humanistic ideal…but the ideal is unattainable.  The supers themselves cannot hold to it even in our imaginations. We are looking for something in supers that is not there.

They are great examples, but very poor solutions. They break down under that kind of pressure.

I still have my favorites, but my days of obsession are over. I’ve found a new obsession.

It seems to me that the genre of supers has declined because we are less hopeful than we used to be, instead of overwhelming victory, as supers used to have, there is a struggle that nearly ends in favor of the villain, until the last possible moment.

But as moving as that can be, it is rare in real life. I prefer to have more hope than that.

And I do hope you got something out of this, until next time–Natasha.

Do Your Worst (Part 2.)

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Okay, continuing from part 1…

So, as I have already covered, there is an attitude toward both real and imaginary people that is very harsh, and it is very prevalent.

But I recognize that I may be the only one who thinks it is a problem. So I am now going to dive into this question: Is it deserved?

Specifically, do these both real and unreal people deserve to be spoken of, cursed, and held a grudge against, in this manner?

What makes this question important even for the made up characters is that many of them do things that real people have done, so we have something to compare them to.

I’m going to go back to Hawk Girl, a. k. a. Shirira, what exactly did she do?

Well, she lied. But that is hardly enough, we all have lied. What makes hers worse, so we think, is that she lied to her friends, multiple times. About who she was, why she was there, and what her own people planned to do.

To be fair, the last one she didn’t know herself and lied more than she thought.

We might jump on that and say, she should have found out what her own people were really planning. Ignorance is no excuse.

It may be no excuse, but all of us have been ignorant and I daresay we acted upon what we thought, instead of what we knew.

So far, I see nothing that overwhelmingly wrong in what she did.

But it turned more serious, she helped her own people defeat her friends, telling them what their weaknesses were, so they could be exploited. She did nothing to stop them from hunting them down. She sucker punched the guy who she’d claimed to be in love with. After asking him to trust her. Not to mention that she’d never told him she was already engaged.  Not that she could be absolutely certain that was going to be a problem since it had been five years with no word from her own people.

All this is pretty bad. On top of it all, she was betraying the whole planet of Earth, almost leading to its destruction. This was heavy stuff.

But as bad as it was, Hawk Girl was never the callous kind of betrayer. She felt guilty for everything.

And I never blamed her for wanting to believe in her own people, who wouldn’t?

It was a tough call, because if they didn’t destroy earth, their enemies would destroy them.

At one memorable moment in the film, Hawk Girl is angrily arguing with her old fiancé, Ro, and cries “So we just trade their lives for our own? That’s not right.” Or something like that.

In a word, Shirira is talking about Honor. Earth is full of life, and its people have no quarrel with the Gordanians, they are not in the war. They were duped. There is no excuse at all for, as she says, for committing this kind of holocaust. Even thought Thanagarians do face extinction by letting Earth survive, it was their fight, their risk, and their choice. We never find out how the war started or who was at fault, but it is certain that the technologically advanced Thanagarians could have had other options, had they not been such a barbaric society. They waited too long, but that was their own fault.

There is no country on earth that could substitute another into its war to be killed in its stead, thank goodness, and I think because of that it is difficult to realize how horrible the idea is. But Shirira did, the reason she was conflicted was because these were her people, how could she turn on them?

She does the same thing to them that she did to the Justice League, but she tells Green Lantern “I did what I thought was right then, which is what I’m doing now.”

I wish I could say that Shirira at least never regretted her choice, but she did. Not enough to unmake it, but she felt horribly guilty and to make matters worse, many people, even in the Justice League, kept ribbing her on it. Eventually she got to the point where she didn’t even want to hear about forgiveness because it was too painful. She got flack for not being able to be loyal to anyone.

I just shake my head, these people entirely missed the point.

Honestly, I think the people writing the series missed the point.

Shirira messed up, but she was listening to her conscience the entire time, and ultimately she did the right thing. She lost her people, you’d think a smidgen of sympathy would be possible. Just a little bit, but it never occurred to anyone to put themselves in her place. Except Superman, I liked him better for that.

And outside the DC universe, what about in real life? Does it ever occur to anyone that these are real people we’re talking about? Who have real feelings, who go through the same things we do, and maybe they made the wrong choice, or maybe they didn’t, but could we just put ourselves in their shoes for one second?

I don’t mean to rant.

Look, I have my beliefs about Mercy, and I know many people do not, but two things Jesus said about it sum up the reason it is important to me. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy,” and “Judge not lest you be judged.”

I want to be shown mercy for my many faults, and I do not want to be judged, so I need to be merciful and not judge other people. Christians are famously accused of being judgmental, but from what I’ve seen, non Christians are every bit as judgmental, if not more.

Who is leaving those hate comments or hate mail; who is blasting those political people; or the opposing side? Yes, Christians do that, but it would be delusional to say all or even most of the culprits are Christian.

And it is not my intent to point fingers, I just mean we all do this. Few people are born merciful. But we all need it, and we all need to learn it.

There is one more thing I want to talk about concerning this, so watch out for part three,

Until next time–Natasha

Do your worst. (Part 1.)

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Today I want to address something very important, and I’m going to do it with the help of yet another animated TV show example.

This one is really fitting, actually.

I’m going back to that show I used to watch every day, Justice League/Justice League Unlimited. (JLU.)

Until I started watching that show I had never heard of at least two of the members of the original league, that would be the Martian Man hunter, and Hawk Girl.

I like both of them, but I am focusing om Hawk Girl, also known as Shirira Hall.

To make a very long story short, Hawk Girl appeared on Earth, claiming it was a mistake, but in reality she was on a secret military mission, to learn about the planet and the people. This was unknown to all her friends and fans until out of the blue, an alien warship showed up with her fellow Thanagarians in it. It pretty much went downhill from there. Her friends felt hurt that she had never trusted them enough to tell them and suspicious of the new comers, but they agreed to help them set up a defense on earth against their mutual threat, the Gordanians. However it soon turned out that the Thanagarians really wished to use Earth to build a sort of shield against their enemy, and in the process earth would be turned into an hourglass shaped hunk of itself, destroying all life on the planet.

Needless to say, Hawk Girl was horrified when she learned this, and more so because she had helped her people to capture and neutralize the Justice League when they got too antsy. They had already escaped, so she found them and gave them the information hat she’d learned, none of them really wanted to trust her, but they took it.

Hawk Girl then returned to her people, only to be found guilty of treason, and locked away. There ensued a final battle between the League and the Thanagarians. Hawk Girl was reluctantly set free by Wonder Woman, and then helped Green Lantern to defeat her former fiancé, and shut down the bypass before it could activate.

The Thanagarians recognized their defeat and left, of course leaving hawk Girl behind, she was then voted on to stay or be kicked out of the League, but she left before hearing their decision. She told GL she was going to find a place where there were no more secrets, no more lies. And she left.

Hawk Girl later was readmitted to the league, they had voted in her favor, but it took a long time for the rest of the world to forgive her, if they ever did. And things got no easier for her in other areas.

So, why am I telling you all this? Well, I want you to understand the scope of the story. It involved a lot of deception, a lot of betrayal, and  a lot of bitterness, which is perhaps the worst, in my book at least.

My major complaint about the whole movie they made about this was that despite the outcome, Hawk Girl’s own friends did not let go of their anger for a long time. Well, I should say, not all of them did. (Flash is awesome.)

Also, when I watched a commentary on the movie, I learned that many of the real life fans of the show though Hawk Girl should have been left to her fate by Wonder Woman.

Since then I’ve run across other situations where the fans were the same, they had absolutely no mercy for the characters. And the characters aren’t even real. Nothing they did actually hurt these fans, or endangered our world.

What does endanger us, is their attitude.

Because I have to wonder, if you cannot forgive someone who is not even real, how can you forgive someone who is?

You may think, “Well, if the characters aren’t real, it can’t hurt to hold a grudge against them.” And I would have to politely disagree.

For two reasons: One being, many fans of superheroes consider the heroes to be quite real, to the point where they are irrational about it, and if they can think that way about them, they can think that way about anyone.

The other reason is that I have not missed the things people say about those in politics, or those who are just famous, or even those who are not but who have a small public voice. Horrible, terrible things are said of them.

It is a sad fact that humans beings can be very cruel to each other.

(I’m going to get more into Hawk Girl herself in part two, but for now I’m focusing on this problem.)

And I am sorry, but what a person will say about a fictional character, they will nine out of ten times say about a real human being. I have heard it many times.

The fact is, we are not aware of real or unreal when we pass judgement on people or their actions. That is a simple truth. Our brains will make no distinction, and neither will our feelings. All that changes is how personal it is.

Someone who cannot be merciful when it is not personal will have a hard time being merciful when it is; unless they are working from the inside out, but that is rare. Our attitudes do not switch on and off with our televisions or phones. (That is so a quote I want to remember.)

This goes for other things besides anger by the way, it goes for hate, sadness, exhilaration, envy, and host of other emotions.

I’ll be getting more into the first one in part two, until next time–Natasha.