I've been having these really bad fights with the voices in my head over whether or not to become an Eagle scout. A lot of it had to do with the twelfth point of the scout law: Reverence. I used to be agnostic and considered myself to be the most religious person I knew because I didn't just go to church on Sunday and just believe what my parents had sat me down and told me to believe. I used to think being atheist was stupid because there has to be something after you die and someone's got to tell you where you go, right? And it was impossible to be mad at something you didn't believe in. But then I thought I was using god as a scapegoat and I took responsibility for everything that happened and I thought, "What about computer programs? Where's their 'Afterdeath'? " which sounds silly, but I thought what if that was what happened to people, too? What if we just stopped existing? It's been really depressing for the past seven months, being an atheist, but I know that I can't just say that I'm a Christian or a Catholic or a Muslim or a Jew or a Bhuddist or LDS because that would be lying and I can't lie about religion because it means something to me. If I join a religion, I'm going to go all the way and be pious and follow all the rules and never swear and be abstinent (luckily still a V so I have that option) and not consume substances and ask for forgiveness and give myself to the lord and be really nice and good and want nothing material and benefit society. But I can't do that. At least not yet. And I've got to find out who I am to find out if I ever can, which sounds really cliche, but I don't want to taint any religion by being in it only halfway. And I know that people do that all the time, but I don't want to be one of THEM. That's how I feel about the Eagle. It means something to me, and to me it should be given to those people who are the embodiment of scouting, who are basically almost saint-like. And I know I'll never be. So I've been having these conversations and been being ostracized accidentally and been fighting with my parents and been wanting to either run away or **** myself or both and then been worrying about my sister and how her life's going to turn out and realizing that I'm a terrible, terrible person and a worse friend and hating myself and wanting to change and knowing I can't and basically just having an all around bad time of it all. Until tonight. I talked with my friend's dad who is this firefighter and I've never wanted to be a firefighter and still don't, but I've always admired him and wished we could just shoot the breeze and he told me that he thought I was an Eagle already. All that I neede now was the paperwork. And the fact that he said that, that he believed in me, that he took the time to tell me that he believed I should do it and that I was a great scout and that even through everything I've been through I kept a-smiling and it takes a real gift for that, the fact that he did all of that for me made me feel really relieved and it made me consider going for Eagle. So I don't know if I will or not, but I do know that if he had just given me a slantface contemplative look and said that Eagle was up to me and that it was up to if I felt I exemplified it, I never would have reconsidered and would have closed the book.

an illustration of the intoxicating nature of pride.