Keep Promises

Hello world!

Since I covered most of what I would have said last week, I will take this time to do something a little different than listing everything I did the past few days. (Trigun is awesome! That's it.)

The topic today is promises!

For you to understand why, let me share a little story. In my old school, I had Seminary right after lunch (I miss that already *tear* Next year I'll have to do online studying), so sometimes I would check out some books during lunch and start reading them, and just continue to read them until the next class started. I became friends with a girl in Seminary when I asked her about a manga she was reading before class, and from that point on we would recommend manga for each other and such.

Once, I was in the middle of Blue Exorcist, and a different guy in Seminary that sat next to me told me I shouldn't read that, because he had once flipped through it in the library and saw it contained bad words and immodesty. After a few seconds of me just staring at him in surprise, I tried to quickly explain that it was easy for me to ignore the immoral stuff, because the plot itself was very interesting. (It is!) He still seemed worried, but let it go after some girl yelled "She can read whatever she wants!"

The day that I announced to the class that it was my last time with them, he gave me a letter he had typed up. It gave detail and background as to his advice for not reading that, and just overall avoiding books and movies like it. It actually made me think a lot about it, and since I knew we were gonna go to the school to get the paperwork finished up, I wrote a letter back to him, giving him my own opinion and thanking him for his. At the end, I promised him that I would not read/watch Blue Exorcist anymore, and maybe see if I can avoid the things he was advising against a little better than before.

I managed to give it to my Seminary teacher to give to him just before we returned home to get ready to leave. I don't know what his response is to mine, but hopefully he will respect what I'm trying to do as much as I do for him.

Time skip, I was in my new school for about 2-3 weeks. I was chatting a little with a guy in the group I've been accepted into. (I'm pretty lucky I was introduced so quickly; I met them on my second day there.) He asked me if I've watched Blue Exorcist, and I said no, but read the first 4 books. (After that was the letters.) He told me that I have to watch the anime, but I awkwardly tried to tell him that I promised someone I wouldn't, and hoped he would just leave it at that.

But nope.

He continued to bug me about it so much I was getting a little scared by him. He refused to back down and understand that the reason was kind of personal. So I eventually tried to summarize what I previously explained in this post. And he got really mad at me!

He refused to believe that was the actually reason. And when I continued to insist it really was the reason, he got ticked off that I would actually make such a stupid promise. And he said "it's not worth it to keep stupid little promises."

NO. NO. NO.

You can't know how much I wanted to punch him when he said that.

There is one rule I always live by, and it is "Always be honest." When you get the reputation of always telling the truth and being sincere, then teachers trust you more, friends appreciate you more, and life is easier than for those who are known to lie and/or make excuses all the time. (I tell people that I couldn't lie to save myself, although I actually have a pretty good poker face if I need it, so now thinking about it, maybe I could. But I would only lie if it would save me and/or someone else. Only in an emergency. Not gonna lie on anything else, especially if I don't need to lie. Dang it, now I'll have to change what I tell people.)

As an extension of that, "If you say you will do something, do it." In other words, "Don't make empty promises." Because I want people to know that they can trust me, if I make a promise with them, I am guaranteed to keep it. If I don't, then that makes me a liar, right? I haven't had to make very serious promises, yet, so all my promises are only for stupid things so far, but I am proud of myself for being so stubborn to keep them.

Then here comes some guy who tells me to not keep my promises. That is basically impossible for me to do, since I'd feel really guilty, but besides that, that just sounds really rude to me. What if there was a promise you made with that guy, but then found out he broke it, with the only explanation being "it's not worth keeping." What if that tiny little thing you expected this guy to do/not do was actually more important to you than he thought? That one sentence told me so much more about his character than a lot of other things I've heard him say.

I gave up and ran to my bus (this conversation was after school, waiting for the buses to come), because I'm not the best at arguing. He continued to bug me about it a few days after that, and probably will bring it up next year at school.

It makes me so upset to know there are people who make even the smallest promises, not expecting to actually keep them. While I'm kind of sad that I'm not gonna get farther into the plot of Blue Exorcist, that is just ONE SERIES within hundreds that I gave up, and no matter how much he tried to convince me, I stood my ground on keeping up my commitment, even if I don't know what the party I made my commitment to thinks of it.

My final message: please, if you say you will do/not do something, be sincere about it. Actually mean whatever it is you say. If you don't keep promises, I really can't say your life will be as happy as possible. (Plus, I might kick your butt.) Please think about your vows, oaths, and swears before making them, even for the most trivial things. I don't know how much I can stress my point past this!

Thank you for reading my little story and rant. *hehe*

To finish this off, I would just like to say that I plan to have my first son's hair cut like Ando from Maoh: Juvenile Remix, and my first daughter like the sister of the main character of Bloody Monday. (It's been too long since I read it, sorry.) I love their hair! I'm sorry! I need to remind Future Me of this so that it actually happens!