This isn't a rant on religion.

I saw these two LDS missionaries the other day standing on the corner of a neighborhood street talking to a guy who did not appear to be a missionary, but rather appeared to be a homeowner in the neighborhood. When I drove by, one of the missionaries looked at me. And I felt sorry for him. Him and his friend, actually. I felt sorry for them because they were wearing black pants and ties. I felt sorry for them because they were wearing heavy backpacks. I felt sorry for them because they had to walk all over this neighborhood begging people to let them speak about their religion. Mostly, though, I felt sorry for them because they placed themselves in this position on their own free will.

I've never understood the whole religious process of spreading the seeds of your knowledge and faith, even when I went to church and believed in the gospel. Missionaries, when left to their own devices of spreading love and kindness to people, do a really great job. They take blankets to children, feed starving countries, build medical units and take care of sick and dying strangers. But rarely is it ever left at that. Accepting their good deeds comes with a price - you must then listen to the dogma which promts them to do good.

And that is the thing about religion that really gets me. Everyone thinks "What makes me happy and fulfilled is enough to make everyone else happy and fulfilled, too." But it rarely is. And in the process of spreading that which makes people happy, others fight and reject the notion of living under someone else's lifestyle. Because that's what religion is - it's a lifestyle. Religion dictates whether or not you get up at 8 a.m. on Sunday, the book you read before bed and who you implore for advice.

This isn't a rant on religion. You can see the same thing happening all over the place. When a couple is in love they try to set up all their single friends so that all the single friends can be happy and in love too. Nations find a system of government that works and then try to implement it across the globe. (Hitler started by invading Europe. Britain did it by colonizing the world. The Roman Empire stretched across three continents. America is currently making the world safe for democracy.) Our home turf government is doing the same thing with the same-sex amendment to the Constitution.

Who makes those rules? Who says "my way of life is better than yours" and thinks that just because they can support it with the fact that they're happy and the fact that their method of living works well, that everyone should believe and follow? (Rhetorical questions.) How can people be so ignorant? How can they fail to see that different is NOT wrong, that they're really causing more problems for themselves than some other subversive human - or subversive culture - will ever cause them if this subversive "other" is just left to live and be happy in their own right?

It's frustrating, is all. I think that we don't get along in society not because the minority groups want to make problems for everyone else. I think that we don't get along because the people in the majority are scared. I think we don't get along because the people in the majority cause problems in not allowing differences. They are in the majority because of differences (of income, race, sex, etc.) but yet try to amalgamate everyone under the Majority Umbrella of Sameness. But some people don't want to be under that umbrella; some people like to feel the cool, refreshing raindrops and the more they're instructed to come under the umbrella, the more they resist, the more they thirst for the fresh sky water.

I think we should all swim in the puddles.