You say I'm irreplaceable.

Where else will you find
unconditional love
a nonjudgmental ear
and genuine selflessness?

You care when it's convenient.
I know a lot is going on in your life.
"The struggle is real," you tell me.
So much is going on in mine
yet I still bend over backwards.
For you.
For anyone who "needs" me to.
Sometimes you ask.
Sometimes you don't.
But I will always come when you need me to.

You can be selfish.
I'm angry.
But I can't be.
I am the one who can't stop myself from doing whatever I can to help you.
You are my dysfunctional, amazing, beautiful friend.

We're both not perfect.
I'm closed.
You're open.
I'm always hurting.
You're always dramatic.
I overgeneralize.
You're superstitious.

Apart or together, we stay close.
Sometimes I think the only thing that could tear us apart is me.
The balance of our friendship is off.
And I am about to fall.
I don't want to take you down with me.
I never, ever want to disappoint you, or hurt you.
But I can't stop the inevitable.
I've already disappointed myself.

If you find it so offensive
that I don't passively accept the *******
you so zealously defend
with phoney statistics and appeals to irrelevant authority,
perhaps you should try to empathize
with how offensive that ******* may be
to a person who values and respects
individuals' divergent opinions.

Then again, in thy defense,
they don't really seem like thy opinions,
they've just been programmed into thee
from a malleable age
by others
who cannot stand a bit of honest dissent
for the sake of earnest
social and spiritual progress.

You're a proper product of your environment.
Your upbringing is bringing you down.

If you want to overgeneralize
and make less options available
that many have fought so hard to make possible,
go live somewhere where you won't have the freedom to choose for yourself
even if it does tend to be an illusion.

But, I know
you don't want to have fewer choices,
you just want others to have fewer choices.

As a philosopher,
I find that ******* disgusting.
Appalling.
Abhorrent.
Evil, even.

If your school of thought
is said to be so 'holy,'
how can it produce such evil people?
I guess it's *******,
either on the teachers' part,
or on the students' part,
or, not unlikely:
both.

A boat that cannot be rocked
is probably an unsafe boat.

A boat that can take a rocking
is more likely to be seaworthy.

It is worth it to find out which boat you're in
before you're committed to it on the open seas of Life.

(Maybe they put you in the unsafe boat on purpose..)

Thy traditionalism
binds thee to a bygone era
of sexism, feudalism, and prejudice.

If it is thy choice
to sacrifice thy free will and curiosity
to that ages old cult,
I venture to claim that you deserve to,
just don't expect any sympathy
from this devout skeptic;

I rock the boat
not to destroy what's good,
but to try to **** out what isn't healthy.

It's nothing personal,
I'm just fond of Devil's Advocacy
in the face of a straw-man argument.

The only thing more blaring
than the fallacies in your claims
is your blind and willing ignorance.

We all seek comfort,
but allowing your intellect to be usurped
for someone else's benefit
is a self-sacrifice seldom worthy of existing.

Some falsely believe that knowledge brings comfort,
but I know that it is only the willingness to deny such comfort
that makes such comfort attainable.

You aren't comfortable,
you're just shut off from the world.

Have the courage to step outside your own mind,
have the courage to step back from yourself and your ego
even if for just a little while,
and perhaps you shall find
that it was only you holding you back,
all along.

Do not hate:

learn;
forgive;
transcend;
seek to understand.
Grow;
nurture;
live;
love:
before it's too late
to reconcile yourself with your truest self.

Stop being used by your mind
and start utilizing it's potential:
be yourself and become the greatest possible actualization of your Godself.

No philosophy is an enemy,
only One's philosophobia is.

Acts of a few are
Not representational
Of groups as a whole

Hi
I’m anthony brandy
And I’m a quarter filipino
Or at least, that’s what my dad tells me
And I’m inclined to believe him because
When I look at the curvature
Of the bones around our eyes
I think I can see it

That somewhere deep down I’m not just a white guy
With a white name
And a whole lot of privilege that comes along with that
But you can’t see it,
And I think that’s what matters

We judge people by who we see they are
And then they become who we say they are

You can’t see it, but I speak Spanish, too
But not because it’s my heritage
Because my white heritage doesn’t have anything to be proud of

I learned Spanish to communicate with others

It all started out as a way to check if people were talking behind my back
And I never even realized that that was a form of guilt-presumption
But as I learned to conjugate and put my words in the right order,
I found out that there are people on the other side of that language barrier
And they have warmer hearts than you could ever imagine
And their arms give the best hugs
And their eyes tell the toughest stories to hear

Like when they came over here, and people heard their accents
They were teased and told to go back to where they came from
And everytime an ******* said that to them,
That home they were told to go back to was always Mexico
Even though Mexico’s not the only country south of Texas

You see, we judge by what we see
And if we’ve never seen or noticed anyone from other countries
We overgeneralize

You can’t see it, but I’m also encumbered by years of religious restrictions
That tell me that my ****** feelings are not allowed
That my doubts have no place near my faith
That my eyes must always bounce
That my vocal cords were meant only for ****** Hillsong songs
And my hands were made to pluck easy four-chord songs
And three-chord songs if you’re lucky

You can’t see it, but there is resentment under this shirt, welling in my chest
And it seeps out of my skin even when I don’t want it to
And I sometimes think it’s best left unexpressed,
But I know, even deeper down than that resentment, that that’s not true

You can’t see it, but I so often feel unnoticed by my peers and my family
Because those doubts that I mentioned before are dangerous,
And my family has wasted no opportunity to tell me that it’s not okay to be who I am,
Having introduced dynamism to my faith
So I am left with only one option:
To hide those things, and keep my mouth shut

What you don’t know, family member, is that when you put on that bumper sticker that said God doesn’t believe in atheists,
You told me you don’t care for me
And what you don’t know, family member, is that when you voted for Trump,
You told my immigrant friends that they should stay away, and that it’s better for them to dwell in their oppression than to even remotely acknowledge it
And what you don’t know, family member, when you tell me how sad it would be for me not to be a Christian,
You tell me it’s not okay to be who I am

But nevertheless, I am who I am
And I will be what I will be
And who I am is a quarter Filipino, privileged white guy who’s trying to do his part
And I wish you could come along with me for that journey
But you are so deeply invested in remaining static,
That I am unsure I can ever help you at all

Telling you stories about my relationships with immigrants can only get me so far into showing you that these people
Are in fact people
And my college education can only get me so far into a conversation with you before you notice that I’m one of those people you call a “libtard”
And you disregard everything I say

I still have my foot in the door, but how long can I keep it open?
When will I blow my cover and be authentic?
Should I have ever kept things a secret in the first place?
Am I just trying to avert inevitable growing pains?

I could not tell you, and I cannot either
But I am nonetheless growing,
Dynamic,
Laden with doubts,
And struggling to make something good come out of my life
I hope you can see that
I hope you can understand
Why I do what I do

challenging my own thoughts
battling my own mind
it isn't all-or-nothing
i will not overgeneralize
the positive things are there
not jumping to conclusions
just because i feel it, doesn't mean it's true
no regrets, only now
i can do this
i can get better