Emulation

The act of emulation is to be like the others.  For one to have friends, one has to be like the people they are trying to attract.  Sometimes that can work for you.  Other times that can work against you.  The question that took me sometime to answer was why and try to be like them?  Why not just try to be myself?  If I couldn't attract friends, then I must have been standing in the wrong crowd.  I was standing in the wrong crowd lots of times and for a long time before I realized that I did not have to be entertained by someone.  Of the girls I was trying to attract, they were praising the Lord every other breath, but at the same time, I would find them in the back seat of their boyfriend's car.  They would be doing some heavy praying.  Of the guys that would praise the Lord, they had an agenda and it was between the legs of their girlfriend.  Or, they were off performing some other undesirable act such as my next door neighbor blowing off his friends head with a shot gun.  The Jehovah's Witnesses across the street, they were just off, period.  Even though the husband was religious, he was religiously seeing another woman.  The priests at my church weren't much better.  They were either drunk, putting a meat shot on some parishioner or both.  There was an incident at my church described in The Train Runs No More.  This was at the time of the Jimmy and Tammy Faye Bakker's, Jimmy Swaggert, The Rev. Jesse, and so on and so forth.  There is a whole list of these evangelist's out to "save" us from sin.  All were womanizing, money laundering, extortionists, preaching how we should act, how we should be, and how we should treat others.  All the while, they were caught behind doors, cheating on their wives, with hookers of both genders, and extorting money in the name of GOD.  Because of the sins of the fathers, the children of these same people just manage to keep it quiet.  Slowly, it is evolving once again.  Growing up trying to find my way through this forest of life ahead, I am supposed to emulate these people?  If it doesn't feel comfortable why do it?  Why not just be who you are?