So my friend and I met God today.
We were in a park just chilling on a bench and having a pretty serious emotional conversation when a random man and woman approached us. They said they thought we looked quote: "interesting to talk to", and that they like to just run into and talk to people and ask them deep questions as a fun conversation opener. And the conversation opener we got was "how would you define true love?".
After a mandated 2 seconds of shock and confusion, my friend tackled the question with her definition of true love: that it can be many different things. There is true love between friends, family, and couples, and all are distinctly different types of the same emotion. She later admitted to me that she did in fact intentionally give one of the lamest answers to their question strictly to avoid prolonging the conversation.
As for myself, I remained quiet during the whole ordeal, and when it finally became my turn to express my deep and inspirational thoughts on true love - I simply stated I had no opinion to express on this matter, and looked away. The sudden intrusion on my conversation with my friend did not leave me in a very talkative mood, and I was desperately hoping to conclude our talk with these strangers so that we may resume our venting session. To my displeasure (and later on, great amusement), that is not how things went
Having received both of our opinions on true love (sort of), the woman (presumably disappointed to find out we were not the cute couple she perceived us as) proceeded to express her own view of true love. She told us that true love is about sacrifice; about holding someone else's needs above your own. Giving for the sake of giving and not expecting anything in return. And for a moment, I was truly intrigued in her perspective of the matter, relating to it personally in my head and partially agreeing with her speech. But it wouldn't last.
The word 'sacrifice' was chosen very deliberately, as the woman finally unveiled the true motive of her intrusion on our talk; to spread the word of God. She expressed how, while not being religious, she and her male companion did believe in a personal connection to God, and how they could sense God speaking and guiding them out of desperate times. My friend and I collectively thought of rolling our eyes, but were too respectful to express this motion physically.
And following her small tangent about God, the woman noticed that I had been awfully quiet and disconnected from this talk, and so she decided to try and "relate" to me. What followed was the slyest and most conniving form of verbal abuse I had ever come to witness.
She turned to me and said: "hey, I'm not sure what you're going through and like what your deal is, but I think God is trying to tell me that you might be struggling with depression, anxiety, people avoidance, and other things like that. Now you don't have to tell me if that's the case and all, but I just want to say that I've gone through all of these things at some point in my life, and that I know how helpless it can seem. I've had alcohol addictions, drug use, porn addictions, like almost everything there is, and the way I found out of it all was through the guidance of God. God showed me that he loved me, and that empowered me to get over all of those awful things and be okay. So I just wanted to tell you, though you might think that you're alone in all this and that nobody loves you, God does love you. You're never alone and you're never unloved, because God loves you".
I was in disbelief. To be honest I still am while writing this. Who the heck are you?? Who walks up to someone and just gets personal with all of their issues that they don't even know are there like that?? Do I really look that much like a depressed anxious and antisocial porn addict??? And to top it off, you're telling me that everything can be fixed up instantly with a little faith in God???? What?????
Now although I was completely flabbergasted at everything she was telling me, I managed to maintain a calm and neutral composure to all of this information up until her speech was over. I made absolutely 0 reaction to any of it and after finishing her verbal abuse, she and the guy she came with handed us business cards to a website titled "meet-god.com". My friend, desperate to get out of this very strange and aggravating situation, made up the excuse that we had to leave in a hurry to catch up with some friends.
We said goodbye to the strangers, and after taking a couple dozen steps away from the crime scene, my friend and I each made a long exhale and burst out laughing. What the hell was that? That was such a ridiculous encounter we couldn't even believe what we just witnessed! Such a rollercoaster of emotions; from "oh these guys must be some college students getting data for a poll or something" to "why the heck are they getting so personal with me" all the way to "are you kidding me? these guys only wanted to tell us about God??". We laughed about that encounter for at least another hour, and it had boosted my mood by so much at the time that I felt it was worth it's entire own entry in the thoughts catalogue. Thus, here we are.