Close your eyes. Imagine the world is flat. Imagine that there is no war. Imagine that there is only good. Imagine everybody is good. Imagine that everything can be worked out. Imagine that nobody was ever born bad. Now imagine there is no conflict. Wake up. You are in a world that is serene. There are flowers everywhere. There are trees everywhere. The flowers are blooming. All the trees are always green. The grass is always green. You are in a beautiful garden. There are multicolored butterflies surrounding you. Their wings are the most incredibly colored and incredibly patterned in the world. Now imagine that in this garden, there is the most handsome man. There is something about him. He seems more perfect than anyone could ever be. It seems that you have finally walked through all the vultures and all the darkness. It feels that you have reached the light. It almost seems surreal. How can anything be this good? Is that possible? You hate yourself for thinking it but somehow you resent this. How is it fair that you can never tell a lie? What about that new shirt that you always wanted for Christmas? You know, the one from Chanel, the one that is one thousand dollars. The one that you think you will never get. You had the courage to ask your grandfather so many times. He never gave it to you. She woke up. She was lying in a beautiful meadow. There were beautiful waterfalls surrounding her. She was actually on a cliff that was surrounded by waterfalls. Her feet were dangling off. She had just woken up from sleeping on her best friends’ shoulder. She knew everything about him. His hiking shoes were tied just so. His laces were always just right. He took care of everything he had. He always wore this stupid hat, it looked like a frog, but he was interested in biology and he loved frogs. When he was in school he always used to write about how everybody was good and there were no bad people. He contradicted her with everything half the time, because he loved to question her. Sometimes her face would go red and she would say that he had no right to question that. He thought that her stubborn- ness was cute. He cared about her though, and realized that sometimes he hurt her feelings. He felt bad whenever he did and always made her pie and a nice card after he had done that. When he really upset her, he bought her brownies and cheesecake, that was her favorite. He never teased her about eating too much because he knew that it would upset her. Sometimes she didn’t realize just how amazing she was. He made sure that he told her just how beautiful she was everyday. She told him just how proud of him she was everyday. She loved herself and she felt that she trusted him more than anyone in the whole world. She knew that he would never hurt her. Every time he walked by her heart beat a little faster. She always wanted to look the best she could for him. She didn’t want to spend too much time. She just spent enough time to make it look like she threw it together. He thought it was adorable. He cared about her so he tried so hard to never hurt someone so amazing. She must have been some angel that fell down from heaven. She was so divine. But when she was grumpy and stubborn, he had to leave her alone. He knew that she had a temper and part of him loved her no matter what and part of him wanted to get the hell out of her way when she was upset. He wanted to escape from his own mistakes. Well he would scheme and scheme and scheme. He would do this sometimes to make her happy, and sometimes to keep her sad. Sometimes he felt that he didn’t deserve her, even as a friend and this was too good to be true. Everything else in his life had been. He was lucky, whether he liked it or not. Luck is an amazing thing. You strike lucky in the lottery. It takes a certain humility and awkwardness to have such luck. You just take what comes, whether you like it or not. Then you learn to not take what you don’t want and to take what you want. The thing is that sometimes being lucky can be a lonely thing. An amazing, beautiful, fancy silver lined piece of s***. When you are lucky, your faults are accepted because people are supposed to love all of you. He was worried sometimes that he could be mean and hurt his friend because he thought so highly of her. The best thing and the worst thing about this couple is that one of them knew how amazing she was, but didn’t want to tell it, rather to show it. He had no idea how beautiful he was, with his frog hat. Do you know how many guts it takes to wear that frog hat? How much strong will it takes? How long he had to wear that hat everyday to school since he was nine years old. To him, that hat was worth more than all his friends and he knew that his real friends would love him, even with that hat. So to him; it was really much more than just a hat. His name was Cris. Her name was Susan. There were so many Crises and Susans in this world that they were always mixed up with someone.

Susan wanted to change her name so that no one would mix her up with this friend in grade school that who was not very nice to her. She made many phone calls to every company that called her cell telling her about some business opportunity. She sighed, there are always some simple business opportunities. She was a romantic at heart, but would be the last to admit it. She would fall in love with a beautiful face, yet hold it inside because she knew never to read a book by its cover. She had read a lot of books when she was younger. She had always looked at the cover and sometimes that made her want to read it. Sometimes the cover of one book had turned her off and she had decided to leave it. She had always regretted leaving the good books with the “bad” covers and reading the “good” books with the good covers. Yet, after reading all the books she could get her hands on, she realized something. Once in a blue moon, there was a really bad cover and she decided, just for fun, to read the first page. The first page was always enticing. After the first paragraph, she would reluctantly leave the book. However, in just a few hours, she wanted to read it again. Sometimes she hated herself for reading: Why would I want to know if this man would kill his wife? Because the story makes it look like this man would never kill his wife. Writers are crazy....she would always think to herself. Why would I want to be crazy like those people? And my life? I don’t want to do that much work? But she did. She knew she would love to be the center of attention, but would she ever admit it? NEVER. She tried so hard to avoid being the princess, the entitled rich kid. Well guess what? She couldn’t help it. Yeah, she loved it. There was no doubt. She loved the fancy clothes and the gorgeous men writing her poems and love letters. Telling her she was beautiful no matter what she had been told growing up. She knew that she was pretty high maintenance. But in her mind, it was human to be. This was because in her mind, everyone was a princess or a king or a queen who was nice to everyone and completely trusted everyone. To her, there was a Supreme Truth. It is just that the evil genuises ruined it. The evil genuises were the corporations. The evil genuises were the people who knew better, who knew how many people they hurt, and did it because they wanted to hurt more people. They knew better, and they knew that they did, but they would never admit this to themselves. Susan had dozed off again, on Cris’s shoulder. Cris kept telling her that it was okay. “But my dreams are scaring me.” “You know why Susan? Because you are amazing. And amazing people are sent amazing dreams.” But I am just this person who just walks through life and takes the good and the bad. No, Cris said, you are amazing because you take the best of both. You take the good parts of the good and the bad parts of the bad. I know because I am the most charming, amazing, charismatic, brilliant idiot and you see me and love me for it. I can memorize biology, and physics, and math because it is clear. All I know I read from a book. And you are the one person who sees me as this human being who just has a lot of luck. It may look like luck, but it is just putting all of yourself into everything. Being completely absorbed in everything you are doing. This takes a very sensitive, clever person. Not necessarily intelligent, but clever. You know all the pranksters? Ploying to hurt the “nerd” somehow? Well, all the nerds, even though they pretend they are goody two shoes, have at some point thought about all the ways to get those bullies back. They have plotted for hours on how to give the mean guy who steals their lunch money something bad. They have thought about giving him glue with the money. They have thought about giving him hot sauce when he takes the rest of their lunch. They never do. Do you ever wonder why? Because they are afraid. They are afraid, somewhere deep inside that they will turn into those bullies. Because they hate how those bullies think. That is why the majority of those who are bullied turn into bullies themselves. This is because they tell themselves that life is unfair and everyone is evil and out to get them. Well, at some level, they are almost right. Then there is the other extreme: That everyone is good and never really means any harm. Subconsciously they assume that they are completely innocent if they befriend the bullies. They otherwise claim that they are too far gone to come back because they do not know any better. The fact that they even acknowledge that means that they are good and that they can become better. “Susan, you know I love you. You are beautiful inside and out, and you are genuine. That is what I love about you.” You are so innocent. “I am not as clever, but I am much smarter” he teased. Hahaha, she laughed. She would give anyone else who said that a short and concise well planned rant about how to talk to a woman if they did that. But it was Cris, the one man in the world who actually did not ever mean to hurt her. He meant to tease, but only to try to understand what he couldn’t. She knew that. And she tried to understand him. Sometimes the most obvious tasks, he just could never do. It was not because he did not want to, it was not because he would not do anything in the world for her. It was because he could never begin to understand how to manage all of that. “You know I will always love you,” Cris whispered in her ear. “No matter how many times I hurt you in my clumsiness. Sometimes I feel like a clown, just wishing that I was more, but I never can be.” He was joking, but not really. She knew that he was the best one at playing games. Social games. That is what they were to her. She had a theory that it was just this funny game that God had created in his spare time. He had placed all this eccentric characters on earth for His own amusement at times and at other times for the greater good of humanity both at the same time. To her, God was a Divine Being relating to humans having personal qualities, but this was only because He would always come in the way people would understand him. God created light first. But then, he realized that maybe no one would appreciate this amazing light. If
God would create darkness, no one would take advantage of light. He wanted his game to be the best in the world. He wanted all the players to benefit. That was God’s idea of fun: Making the best of every human’s lives. Putting them in funny situations. Circumstances where they do not know what to say or what to do. Laughing all the time at those silly humans. But God really means well. He only plays all of these pranks on humans so that they will learn, and every now and then, there are a few special spirits that he sends down to earth. He tells them that they are going to have to fix something, and these are not pranks, and they better not be tempted, but they are. And they are always put in a body that will help people understand. And humans are funny creatures, they always look down on all the bloodshed in history and say that it is terrible. If it is so terrible, why do they want to know so much? Because in the deepest corners of their consciousness, some people believe that someone that evil deserves to be killed. No, no one deserves to kill. That is the issue. Sure, people are pushed. But there are two forces at work, the good force and the bad force. And it is the simplest, most straight forward thing in the world, but we’re human. If we are raised in a concealed patriarchal society, then we are raised to believe that men are better than woman. Is this true? Were all men really that entitled at birth? No. They were not. They must have thought it was horrible, you know, the ones who showed their feelings which they were never “supposed” to do. Well, Cris was a good boy, and he disagreed with that. Men should be able to weep, and laugh, and cry, just like everyone else. Society is unfair in pressuring them not to. So he laughed and cried and played with Susan. He liked that she questioned everything. That is what her parents kept telling her to do. So she did. Cris protected her from anyone who was ever mean to her. From anyone who was trying to hurt her. He would always tell her just how precious she was to him. One day, Cris left their small paradise. Susan was a strong, stubborn woman, and she knew that. Cris was in love. There was finally a woman who knew what she deserved. She deserved the best, and she had realized it, in the most charming, charismatic, incredible manner in the world. She had been her best and worst and he loved her through it all. Through the bad times, he loved her. Through the good times, he loved her. He knew that she was the best person he had ever seen. Their love was like the love they talk about in books, because sometimes it is realistic to have the innocence of a child in a corrupt world. It is ridiculous that keeping your innocence has to be a rebellion. Think about it. All the rebels question authority but they are just following along, doing all the “bad” things that are “normal.” What about the people who want clean water and realize that maybe, just maybe, the whole world is a corrupt game that everyone has been thrust into. And nobody is evil but it is a sick game about how long the few pure souls can hang in before giving into the dark side. The real rebels are the ones who rebel against the dark side, the ones who rebel against the rebels. The ones who are constantly questioned. So, after being constantly questioned, you eventually learn to constantly question. Society raises everyone to hurt people, so maybe Susan and Cris are cooler than everyone. Maybe Susan and Cris are the ones who rebel against those in authority. Maybe they are the ones who want to be children forever. Who want to hang onto their childhood and never let it go, because it was beautiful. Maybe the real rebels are the few in this world who said that they could be kids no matter what the older kids said. Maybe the people who society should be trying to set up for success, are the ones who get bullied in school because they have the courage to not sell their souls for the crowd. They have the courage to make sacrifices for the greater good. You know that they will walk their talk, and if they give you their word, they will keep it. Would the world rather have a clever, unassuming, thoughtful, quiet master who actually thinks than a brilliant idiot who does not know how much harm he causes? Cris woke up again. “Susan”, he said, “I love you more than anyone in the world.” The two friends looked into each others’ eyes. They had known each other for ten years. She loved the way he always tried so hard to comb his hair, but he missed that one spot. He loved the way she would always help people. She was so selfless, no matter what. She would always be his princess. He would always be her prince.