Nathaniel Laiet

I’m going to explain what friends will receive and should expect from me. If you’re not yet my friend and are contemplating adding me to your repertoire of acquaintances, be sure to carefully read through the following 9 points and accept the terms.

In an age where we require documentation for everything, I feel that this is very important and will only help to improve the society in which we live.

1 | Social Obligation

Friendship requires one to be social. I see it as my responsibility to talk to you about everyone I know. Sharing their secrets and telling all of what they did. Some like to call this gossip or slander. Social obligation has a more pleasant ring I feel.

2 | Bonding time

When spending time together, I will ignore all others (unless she’s - cute in which case I won’t be listening). This will make it difficult for others to pass us in the mall or on the side walk, or pretty much do anything easily within our vicinity. This is because we will never watch where we’re going but instead carefully thinking only about what we want and what we’re doing. Looking out for those around us when we’re with friends is not showing friendship to our friends at all.

3 | Happy hours

Despite the sign ‘Happy Hour’ (singular), our nights out should be long. I keep this in mind each time and will encourage you to have just one more and to stay a little later. I assume that you want to look like me and be like me. If I succeed, you should show the following attributes: beautiful round gut, difficultly getting up in the morning, lack of concentration at work, forgetfulness and laziness around work and home and lastly lose all self motivation during daylight hours.

4 | Hosting and visitation

When visiting you, I will make every effort to help you be a wonderful host. I will not bring anything nor pay for any meals. I will use your water, food, electricity and even expect you to pay for transport when you take me somewhere for my tourly pleasure. I do this because I know you want to display your friendship in monetary terms and since I’m traveling, I have less money than you do.

If you’re visiting me, I will expect your help with the groceries, transport and other costs. This is because if you’re traveling you have obviously saved money to do so. Naturally you have more money than I do at this time. As my friend I assume you want to bless me if you’ve traveled halfway around the globe to see me.

5 | Money

At times when we’re traveling together, I will never use a ‘kitty’ – after all, we’re friends and trust and respect each other right? At the end of meals etc., I will wait for you to order the bill so it’s delivered to you. I will then always reach for my wallet slower than you when paying is necessary (incidentally, this is called the ’slow draw’). This is to help you display your generosity and love publicly.

6 | Discourse

What you say is important but remember that it takes two to converse. I thus will wait for breaks in your discourse to air my own facts and opinions of which I don’t know where I’ve learned or what encouraged me to take the stance in the first place. Every remark you make, I will respond in 1 of 2 ways. 1- Immediately disagree and/or improve upon what you have said. As you are my friend, I feel it’s my responsibility to be your critic so you may learn from me. 2. I will suggest ways in which to fix your problem, starting with the most obvious - those which you have already thought of. Then I’ll move onto the impossible and ask you why it’s impossible. Often I’ll tell you that it’s not, even when I don’t know the full story.

7 | Sharing

Sharing is very important in friendship, when I’m bored or sad, I will do my utmost to make you bored and sad. When I’m happy – I will ignore your emotions and try to make you feel as happy as me. My emotions and feelings also hang upon how you treat me. I feel that you are responsible for my happiness. Sharing is very important.

8 | Taste and opinion

To improve your social status, I will help improve your taste and opinion in everything. If I prefer my wheet-bix soggy, I will make yours soggy as well. I will tell you what clothes you should wear – I should know because I read all the latest magazines on famous people and their do’s and don’ts with fashion. Often you will find that you’re not wearing something you’re comfortable in, eating foods that you dislike and going to places or spending time with people whom you hate. But be patient, this is for your own good. I know what you like and should like better than you do.

9 | Contact

Your emails mean a lot to me. I spend months thinking what to reply and will inevitably reply with an apology for replying so slowly. I will refrain from telling you any news at all. But, during times when I’m traveling to exotic places I will be sure to email you every 2 days or so with lengthy, unedited, poorly written emails telling you how much more fun my life is than yours.

Further notes:

You can now see how much of an effort I make to retain good friendships with you all. I hope that you can now clearly understand why I much prefer to spend time with myself. It’s stressful to make sure I go out of my way to achieve my 9 goals in our relationship.

Dear God,

God, why am I a burden to society, to others and to my family. Why is it that I’m so lazy? Why can’t you just attach strings and play me like a puppet? Wouldn’t it be easier to achieve your purpose through me this way?

But instead you allow me to live. No – not allow – I should be dead. You intervened and insisted that I live, but You left me broken. You didn’t give me everything back to me and left me here without a purpose. Or maybe I’m just not listening.

But you left me with hope, only I don’t have anything to hope for, and when there is hope it never comes to fruit.

Or perhaps You’re waiting for me to realise that even if my hopes were fruitful, that nothing would actually change. Everything remains the same.

So instead, You wait silently as I grow dead to myself. Waiting perhaps until everything that is not of You is purged from my life, my actions and my thoughts.

And though I hate it, I pray that this is what You’re doing. And if it isn’t, I pray that You would take me now for if I can not die to this life on earth while on earth, then there is no point in sticking around and remaining a burden to those in my acquaintance.

And this is what You’ve taught me through Your silence God.

I’m not as spiritual as I thought I was.

I’m not as passionate as I thought I was.

I’m not as nice as I thought I was.

I’m not as wise, skilful, clever, talented, intellectual, or as smart as I thought I would be by now.

I don’t persevere as much as I thought I would.

Nor do I retain my integrity the way You’ve taught me to.

And even some of what I did have, You have allowed to be taken from me.

God does it satisfy you that You have a broken, lazy follower? Even the word servant can’t describe my attitude, because I’m still living for myself.

But something else You’ve taught me; something far more important.

You will never allow something to be taken from me which I need to further Your work here on earth.

I’m useful to Your purpose each day with what I have been given and allowed to keep.

And if I am useful and you promise that I’m strongest when I am weak. Though I’m not as smart, clever, and talented as I would like to be, and though I can’t see it, You are still using me every day to fulfil your works through me.

And on that note, there are probably some people I know who would appreciate knowing how much they’ve meant to me.

Thanks,

! Nathaniel

I stand in awe of wisdom, understanding and knowledge.

Science and mathematics seems to have no end to its purposes and greatness.

Who can’t help but stand in awe and worship these things?

Even my own mind has more crevices than I could ever hope to explore in one lifetime. I stand in awe at the power of mans mind, even when no man has ever fully harnessed its power.

I need to worship – something; and these are the things I choose to worship.

Most of my day is spent in worshiping something. Sometimes it’s food, or music, or language or even someone’s personality.

I must have been wired to worship because I can’t help but worship with every living breath. With every act, I am worshiping something, subtle or no. And I find that most of my worship is for myself.

But worshiping these things serves no purpose. What do I gain by professing the greatness of science or knowledge, thought, culture or religion?

By worshiping these things, I gain nothing and I give nothing.

Is it beneficial to me to profess science (for example) to the world as worthy of our worship? Would it change our minds and our attitudes?

Until I find something truly fitting to worship – something worth worshiping, I think I’ll continue to worship myself. At least I derive some satisfaction from this.

Let’s talk about love!

Most of the time, I love my glamour girl because of how I feel. But even though I feel ‘in love’, I am still choosing to love her or to continue loving her. Feeling ‘in love’ just makes my choice to love her easier.

Though I feel ‘in love’, it is still my choice to love my glamour girl which takes my feeling of being ‘in love’ to a truer reality of love. Often when I don’t feel ‘in love’ I stop loving glamour girl for a time.

Do I stop loving glamour girl because I don’t feel ‘in love’, or do I choose to stop loving that person as a result of not feeling ‘in love’.

Asking myself these questions I find that to love is a choice.

Before we go any further, let’s define love. This is difficult enough to have its own essay - which I may write at a later date – but for now, let’s use a Greek word for love - Agape.

Love defined |

Agape love is unconditional love. Unconditional love requires a sacrificial lifestyle to attain it. Basically, if you are to love anyone this way, you are to show love to them even when you don’t wish too, and even when you must sacrifice something to continue giving them love.

Keep this definition of love in mind as you read this essay.

Needing love |

I want to be loved and feel loved. I desire it and I need it. Because I desire and need love so badly, I look for it everywhere. I cross oceans looking for it and spend time in chat rooms with people who I don’t even know - hoping for a moment of love. I want it so badly that I even try to heighten my ‘love’ senses by watching love movies, reading magazines, fantasizing or taking drugs and more.

This makes me wonder… what percentage of my acquaintances have actually found love. And from those who profess to know love, I wonder what their definition of love is.

Verb vs. Noun |

Many people tend to believe that love is a feeling. The contemporary Christian band, DC Talk has a song titled ‘love is a verb’. A verb is an action, and shouldn’t this be what love is? Acting upon your feelings to show your love requires choice. No action is taken without making a choice.

What good is it to say you love somebody if you can’t back it up with action? Like the song ‘more than words’ by Xtreme, if you really want to love, there must be an action and for every action there is something you must sacrifice.

This is why I say that to love (according to the above definition) requires a choice. To stop loving also requires a choice. If I stop loving glamour girl, I find that it’s because there’s something I want back. Usually it’s my time or my money, but sometimes it’s my sanity. There probably aren’t many people who would sacrifice their sanity for love without having a feeling. When I think back to when I felt ‘in love’, I find hundreds of examples where I acted a fool to prove my love to the glamour queen (women need to see love proved).

Why is it that I am so willing to sacrifice my sanity for someone when I feel ‘in love’, but not when I don’t feel ‘in love’?

I’ll let you answer that one…

Blind love |

We all know the adage ‘love is blind’, implying that we make stupid choices when we are ‘in love’. When I feel ‘in love’, I start making choices based upon ‘in love’ feelings, rather than making choices that are best. It seems that no matter what my glamour queen does, I can’t help but love her anyway. And this is good! Provided I’m not being conned, I’m loving her unconditionally (note that adding ‘ing’ to a word makes it a verb).

But when my ‘in love’ feeling goes, I find my thoughts, and wish for self preservation and self desires rather than those of my glamour queen. I begin sacrificing her desires for mine, she stops feeling loved and reacts toward me in a similar fashion. We start to wonder where the love went, and tomorrow we divorce!

Once the feeling goes and I’m running logically, I have to actively make choices to continue loving my glamour queen if I am to keep the love and feeling.

Love spring |

So where do my feelings initially come from anyway?

Perhaps you’re going to tell me that I don’t know the first thing about love, that you can have love at first sight – that I need to really know what it’s like to have that feeling from the first moment. By all means tell me, but read on first.

A friend once told me that he would not want to marry a Thai girl, because as a developing nation he was worried that she would only ‘love’ him for his money. He wanted true love; he wanted someone to love him for whom he was.

I asked him why he thought that a Thai girl would only want him for his money. He responded, “Isn’t that why they are attracted to white guys?”

I answered “mostly yes” but asked him, “Why are white American girls attracted to you?”

We came up with a few possibilities. His looks, his charm, or his popularity were a few. So I asked him “Aren’t you worried that your white girlfriend doesn’t love you for whom you are, but rather loves you for your looks and your popularity?”

He admitted that “Yes, it takes time for someone to know him very well, which means that he can’t be loved for whom he is until they really do know him.”

My instantaneous ‘in love’ feelings aren’t showing love, and I’d be deceiving myself if I ever believed otherwise. I’m not condemning these instantaneous feelings – they’re great feelings, but I want to be careful to separate who my glamour girl really is, from those initial appearances which tempt me to love her in the first place. I get to know my glamour girl because of those instantaneous feelings.

Let me ask you this…

If you never had those initial feelings about someone, would you give up on trying to find someone to love?

These feelings help us to find someone to love. But those first few feelings of mine aren’t true love until I decide to choose to love that glamour girl despite how I may feel in future.

The command |

The bible is a great place to find quotes on love. As a refresher, I looked some up. Surprisingly, I found that all quotes on love in the bible are commands.

Corinthians commands men to “love your wife”, and Jesus Christ said to “love your neighbour as yourself.” And nowhere does the bible end these commands with “… when you feel in love”

I often wondered why the bible doesn’t tell children to love their parents but rather “obey your parents.” It occurred to me that children don’t yet know what it is to love.

Children know what it is to be loved, and they can only show love as they have been taught by their parents. Ever noticed that parents must tell their children to ‘love’ others, to share with others and treat their friends as they would be treated. A child loves his/her parents because they are looked after by them. It isn’t until a child is older will s/he realise that they love their parents because of who they are rather than because their parents are their provider (incidentally, this is how love works with Jesus Christ and his Father and us – though some people never get past the childhood understanding of love – always asking for something as a child would in a candy store and feeling emotionally down if they don’t get it).

So what am I to do?

I’m commanded to love, but I don’t always feel like giving love.

This is why it’s a command. I can choose to love despite my feelings and as I learn to love more, my feelings will grow. In fact, I have found that when I choose to love even when I don’t feel like it, I start to love loving and don’t necessarily need others love to keep me happy. I find that I needn’t rely solely on others returning love to keep me happy, or to keep me feeling ‘in love’.

To stay healthy, I’m going to love. I’m choosing to love, despite how I feel. And I’m going to learn to love when it’s necessary and correctly weather I feel ‘in love’ or not.

Happy ending |

The love movie never really ends does it? It usually ends when Elvis gets the girl (Elvis always gets the girl). The movie stops when both Elvis and the Girl feel ‘in love’. Ever notice how he has a new girl in every movie? Obviously he didn’t follow through on my choosing love principles. Though you can’t blame him for that..

…I hadn’t written this essay yet!