So tell me, what are you hiding from yourself?
Who are you trying to fool with your fake smiles
and your empty laughter?
You know, maybe you can't reach that goal you're striving for
because you're just too afraid to take the steps
necessary to get there.
Or maybe you're afraid that you'll fall back
in your old ways, even if you do succeed.
And if any of those resonate with you,
then hey, you're not alone.
But don't be afraid of success.
Learn to embrace your past,
just like today's character from ReZero did.
And that's of course, the witch of frost, Emilia.
Hey, what's going on guys?
My name is Nate,
and you're listening to the Otaku Liberation,
a show where we help you break free from the chains
that are holding you back in your life
by connecting some biblical principles
with themes from your favorite anime.
And without further ado, let's get into it.
So for this whole concept of, you know,
facing your past, me and just dealing with, you know,
fate, your past, your future, all of these things, right,
that we look for answers to, right?
One of the main verses that came to mind
is Psalm chapter 103, verse 12.
And it goes, as far as the East is from the West,
so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
And essentially what that saying is, you know,
as God forgives and forgets our transgressions,
the sins, the bad things that we've done in our life, right?
And He does that by grace,
so there's nothing that we can try or earn
or do anything for ourselves like that.
But if our Heavenly Father, our Creator,
if He can forgive, if He forgives our transgressions,
then why can't you forgive yourself?
You know, because I mean, in the ultimate power,
He said it's okay, so why can't you do that for yourself?
And really that's what today's episode is gonna be about,
is learning how to face your past
instead of running away from it,
or just face it and not just face it and view it,
but to also accept it, right?
And we're gonna break that down
by looking at how Amelia literally had to face her past.
We're not talking about some self-reflection
or anything like that.
Like, no, no, no, she had to go back,
she had to go back and see her past unfold
right before her eyes again.
And so before we get into that part of me,
backtrack a little bit.
So to understand Amelia as a character, right?
So Amelia has a very striking resemblance
to the Witch of Envy, who is,
for as far as we know at the current point in time,
is the main antagonist of the series, right?
The series of Re Zero.
And the Witch of Envy is one of the sinful witches, right?
Who are all villains and villainesses in their own right,
but she's the worst of the worst
because she ended up killing the rest of them
for some reason.
And Amelia has a very, very striking resemblance to her.
I almost like she could be her daughter,
which she's implied to be.
But that, just her looking like the witch
led to a lot of hatred from the people around her,
mainly the humans and the people who,
honestly, it's justified.
Witch of Envy is a terrible, terrible existence, right?
She did so many unspeakable things to the people around.
So when they see Amelia,
they can't help but be reminded of that.
And of course, they can do what anybody who hates them,
they speak ill of her, they just,
it's just bad mouth, bad mouth all the time, right?
And that has caused her to essentially close herself off
from the world.
And because before Amelia lived in a village with her aunt,
who she called her mom,
because she was the one taking care of her,
and then all the other village elves and things like that.
But due to events in the story,
and she wound up being alone,
save for her familiar Puck, who eventually found her.
But from a long time, it was just those two.
It was just the two of them.
And due to how the people in the village and town
treated her, she figured just to avoid as much conflict
as she could.
So she kept to herself.
And my question is,
why are you closing yourself off?
Why are you pushing away the other people?
Not necessarily the ones who are calling you,
calling out your name, saying hateful things about you.
Because, hey, I don't want to deal with those people either.
I'm just gonna be honest with you,
I don't have the time or the patience or the effort
to deal with those type of people.
But I know how easy it is to do that to everybody you meet,
to everybody who's around, to just push everyone away
and close yourself off completely.
And it may seem good at first.
I mean, it may seem like the right thing to do
for your own sake, for your own sanity.
But there are people out there
who genuinely want to help you,
who genuinely just want to get to know you,
genuinely love you, just want to love on you.
And when you're hurt,
it's easy to become blinded to that,
to become blinded to the genuineness
of somebody else's love and care for you.
So that's why I asked the question,
because someone had asked myself too,
it was like, why do you close yourself off?
Do you feel like you're not good enough?
In some cases, you feel like they are not good enough.
Do you feel like you can't be forgiven?
Do you feel like you're not living up to their expectations,
your own expectations?
I mean, really, what is it?
I mean, these are just, I don't know,
not even real suggestions, right?
But again, no one knows your heart better than you do,
except for God, right?
And he's not no one, he's the one, right?
But seriously, why do you feel the need
to cut yourself off?
And again, as you know, we're all flawed creatures, right?
Nobody's perfect.
And the fact that people are calling Amelia,
somebody that she's not, maybe somebody in your life
are calling or saying what you are or who you are
and whether they know you or not.
And if you're not careful,
you will allow what they say to influence who you are.
And again, I know it's easier said than done,
trust me, I know.
And it's especially true for people in our younger generation
what's coming up now,
because in this time of social media
and just everyone's so ironically so interconnected,
if we haven't been further apart than we are now.
And with so many different things to look at,
so many people's lives are on full display,
it's easy for the younger generation
who don't have as much life experience,
who haven't had time to develop their sense of self
to be influenced by what other people say.
When they're trying to become who these people
through these screens are,
and that's not who they've been called to be,
it's just not, right?
Now I'm not saying you can't be inspired by somebody else,
you can't seize what someone else has done with their life
and say, you know what, that's what I want.
That's what I want my goal to be.
I'm not saying that,
because there's a difference between striving for a goal
and striving to be somebody else,
but all the two completely different things.
And when you're young and impressionable,
you don't know anything about the world,
you don't even know who you are, right?
And it's just, when you don't have the guidance,
when you don't know who to go to,
you either A, in the following anything and everyone,
or B, you can do like Amelia
and completely cut yourself off and say,
no, I'll try to figure this out by myself.
Both cases aren't really to the betterment of you.
And yeah, like I said, man,
like I said a couple episodes ago,
this podcast is something that I worked on,
I'm still working on for myself in a lot of ways
and this is just me sharing it with you guys
and spraying that resonates with somebody.
And just know that, hey, you're not alone,
you're not going through this alone, right?
There's people ahead of you
who've gone through the same thing to give you tips
or people who are going through it right now,
that they may need you just like you need them.
Because like they say, misery loves company, right?
But it's not in the sense that everyone wants to be
just down together, it's just having that network,
that support group to really get you out of this hole,
and really get you out and go on to the next level.
That's what this whole thing is about.
And unfortunately for Amelia, her closing herself off
led to a lack of emotional maturity
and in a kind of twisted sense, it's funny.
It's funny, when I was researching for this episode,
and of course when I was watching the anime,
it was a weird duality.
So since Amelia shut herself off
from the outside world for so long,
and the only person she really interacted with was Puck,
again, her spirit that she's in contract with,
and eventually Roswald and the twins and everybody
who came after, it caused her to,
again, be emotionally stunted, so she doesn't really know
how to deal with people and how to convey
her own feelings and emotions.
But at the same time, it caused her to heavily rely
on those other people, namely Puck and Subaru,
to be her source of strength, to be her counsel
or guidance or whatever it is.
You never knew how to do that for herself
for the longest time.
And as you go to show, if you don't allow yourself
to essentially live life and to really go out there
and make your mistakes, again, this isn't about
you not making mistakes, this isn't about you
not living up to what you're called to be, right?
Because again, we're all human, we've all done something
that we're not proud of, that we don't ever want
to come to the light of day.
And it is what it is, but again, you can't stay there, right?
You can't stay there because ultimately you're gonna end up
being stunted in one way or another.
Now, all of this isn't just Amelia's fault in this, right?
So again, she cut herself off from the world
after her village was essentially frozen solid.
And due to her resemblance of the Witch of Envy,
people, you know, bad mouth her,
they treated her terribly, right?
But so in order to help alleviate some of her suffering,
Puck decided he was gonna seal Amelia's memories away
to keep her safe from that pain, to keep her protected,
to keep her from having to suffer
the way she had been suffering before.
And on one hand, he's doing what he,
he did what he did because he loves her
and he wants her to be safe and protected.
But sometimes doing what we think is helpful
might end up causing more harm than good.
And I say I know, I don't know,
because I'm not a parent, but I sympathize with parents
because a lot of the, almost everything that they do
is for the betterment of their child in some form of fashion,
you know, whatever it is,
parents go above and beyond for their children.
And as a children,
we never really truly understand that,
I guess, until we have our own kids.
Like I said, I don't have any children.
So I can't fully grasp that concept yet.
But as I've gotten older and, you know,
experienced more of life and what the world is about,
I do understand more and appreciate more
for what my parents did when I was younger
and what they're doing now for my younger sister
and things like that.
But so that's what Puck was doing for Amelia,
because at this point he was her pseudo father figure.
And like I said, he's trying to shelter her from the pain,
but in doing so, she was never able to process
and to grow from that pain, right?
So just because you hide something,
just because you try to ignore it,
doesn't mean it's not there.
Let me say that again,
just because you try to run for something,
just because you're trying to hide for something,
just because you try to ignore it,
doesn't mean it's not there.
Doesn't mean it's gonna go away.
It's still there in the same spot that you left it.
And if you never learn how to properly face it,
then the trials that are gonna come later down in your life
are gonna be that much harder.
In Amelia's case, that was literally,
like I'm not even being figured
if that was exactly what happened.
Because when they went to the sanctuary,
which just happens to be the Witch of Greed's burial chambers
in order to get out,
those who have been accepted to be able to take on the trials,
they have to pass through three trials
in order to essentially lift the seal from the sanctuary
so they can all leave.
And Amelia was the one who had to go through the trials
because, again, it's part of her thing
to try to get elected as the next king
and a bunch of political stuff, basically.
But in the first trial,
the first trial deals with your past
and you having to face it.
But because Amelia, she never faced her past
in the first place, she never went through it.
She, because her memories were sealed,
she had a whole bunch of difficulties
going through just the first trial.
And she suffered way more during it
than someone like Subaru did
because Subaru went through the first trial himself as well.
He passed it.
It wasn't easy because he had to face his own past
through the things that he regretted,
things that he never got to say and nor do.
But in Amelia's case,
since most of her past, some of her past,
she couldn't even remember.
In her case, it wasn't a choice,
but nevertheless, because of her past,
she, something was ignored, it was never dealt with.
It just carried on into the next season.
So now when she had to face this current trial,
she must first reconcile with the past trauma first
before she can even move on.
And that leads me to my next question is,
what are you turning a blind eye to?
What is something that you are willingly
not dealing with, not looking at?
Because again, in Amelia's case, for this example,
she didn't choose for Puck to get rid of her memories.
He did that of his own accord
because he loved her and wanted to protect her.
But I'm talking to you
because I know throughout this whole episode,
there's something or maybe many things
that have come to mind that you are running away from,
that you are hiding from.
So I'm gonna ask you,
what are you turning a blind eye to?
What are the things that you see in your life
that needs to be changed, that can be changed?
And I'm not saying that you're not expecting
you to do the impossible,
but I know good and well there's something in your life
that maybe you wanna change
that you don't even know where to begin, right?
But it's something that's in your heart.
And the best analogy I can give is your past,
it's kind of like our shadows, right?
Think about it.
In the darkest time, it seems like it's always around,
it's always on your mind, everywhere you look,
it's just that thing, the thing that you did,
the thing that is so unspeakable,
the thing that you can't seem to break free from
is all encompassing.
And even when you get that little bit of joy,
little bit of light in your life, right?
Every time you turn around, boom, it's there, right?
This is just there, looking back at you.
But that's not the end of it,
because yes, like our shadows,
we can't escape from our past, it's a part of us, right?
Everywhere you go, it's right there with you,
right there next to you, right there beside you.
So instead of letting it be a ball and chain
that entraps you, because you don't wanna look at it,
you don't wanna face it, you don't even wanna acknowledge it,
why not turn around and face it, right?
Because I don't know about you, but for me,
if I'm gonna be stuck with something
for the entirety of my life,
I want to have it on my own terms, right?
I don't want to have this mind control,
this vicious vice grip over my life.
And now I'm just living in fear, anxiety, anger,
every single day.
I'd rather, it's like, no, I'm not gonna let you
take over my life and just ruin my life
for a mistake I made when I was five years old,
whatever the case may be.
And so again, that's just me.
Maybe I'm built different, I don't know.
But I do know that it is in everyone
to be able to face your past,
because I think you owe it to yourself, right?
You shouldn't be held accountable
for a mistake you made when you were younger.
You're right.
At least not by yourself.
I mean, if you did the crime, you've done the time,
you've moved past it, everyone else has moved past it,
but you.
And again, like with everything, it all starts from you.
It all starts internally, right?
Now, we all don't have this magical sanctuary place
that we can go through and force you
to go through your past to take on this trial.
But I do know, most people have a mirror.
So why don't you go in and look yourself in the mirror
and truly, truly face and deal with whatever it is.
Because again, I don't know you.
You don't know me like that.
And I don't know what you did.
And you don't know what I did,
you don't know what I've done.
But at the end of the day,
you have to learn to let go.
Don't stop holding your fist so tight,
for the good and for the bad things.
Because we, this world again, life is hard.
Life's hard enough.
It really is.
You got so many other oppositions out there
who are trying to beat you down.
Don't help them.
Don't give them the ammunition.
Don't give them the handicap by you handicapping yourself
because you don't know how to let go
of something that's happened.
And if you got people around you
who are constantly bringing up the past,
who are constantly bringing up what you've done
and never take the time to look at what they've done
and things like that, then hey, trouble.
So is yours.
I know I spent like the last,
I don't know how many episodes talking about
getting around people who support you,
who love you and who are real.
Absolutely.
But part of that is also about cutting,
yeah, trim the fat and getting rid of the people
who don't bring that into your life,
who aren't true and real to you, right?
Who are always bringing up,
oh, remember when you did this
or remember when you did that
or remember I helped you just one time
and now you're gonna ask, you know what?
People who keep bringing up the past
and wind up living there.
And I don't want that for you.
So and of course that requires you to
not only face your past, but to accept your past.
And in Amelia's case, when she was able to
first recall it, after Puck undid the seal on her memories,
she was able to remember her past in its entirety,
which allowed her to at least attempt the trial again.
Now, again, getting her memories back
was just the first step.
The second step was to actually go through them again
and face it.
And hey, she was able to do just that.
And I'm not trying to give too many spoilers,
but yeah, so watch the anime,
it'd be like really good.
But just know that she did in fact pass her trials
after she was able to remember.
And this is really the key part
I kinda wanna drive home is that
after she passed the trials, right?
After she went through and faced her past,
she saw her possible presence
and then she saw what could be the future.
And then she passed all three trials,
she came out with a renewed outlook on life.
And she had an air of authority and certainty
that she didn't have before.
Because before Amelia was very,
just reserved.
I don't wanna say timid,
because she's not really shy,
but more reserved about her opinions
and how she was feeling about me,
how she was dealing with it.
Like I said earlier, she relied primarily on Puck
and Subaru to the heavy lifting quote unquote,
when it comes to dealing with worldly issues
and things like that.
But after she went through her trials,
after she faced and accepted her past
and then beyond that into the possible futures
as horrible as some of them may seem,
she came out with like, you know what?
It doesn't matter what's gonna come,
I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do, right?
I'm gonna do what I feel like is right,
what I think is right.
And whatever happens happens,
I know I gave it my all.
I know that I put forth the best effort
I could possibly put going forward.
And I'm not worried about what happened before,
the past is in the past.
It happened, I acknowledge that it happened,
and now I'm moving on with my life.
That's essentially what her attitude is.
Now she's focused on future battles
that she's gonna have to prepare for, right?
But she's not living in the past anymore,
she's not even living in the future.
She's taking the steps right now here in the present
in order to prepare for the future battles, right?
And hey, what I wanna take from that is that,
the change that you want to achieve
is honestly closer than you think.
All it may take is for you to face and accept your past,
because you can't change it, but you can learn from it.
And honestly, you can let it change you.
You can let it change you into somebody who's better,
who's better off, right?
Who's stronger than you were before,
who, and not just stronger physically, but mentally too.
Because again, these are all internal battles
that no amount of lifting is gonna help you overpower,
right?
Unless you're like Goku who can fight as a spirit,
but you know, I'm not Goku, so.
But no, seriously, in all seriousness,
facing your past is just one step, right?
Actually, even before you face it,
the first step is acknowledging it, right?
You have to acknowledge that, hey, I messed up,
or hey, this happened to me.
Is it tragic and unspeakable?
It may be.
It honestly may be, I don't know.
But if it is that for you, you know,
again, my heart goes out to you.
Seriously, guys, I can't say I understand.
I know it because I don't.
I'm not gonna insult what you've gone through
by saying that I do.
But what I do know is that you're not alone in all of this.
You're not alone in your suffering,
in that dark place that you're in.
And again, I just encourage you all to,
for all of us to find the people that we can share this with,
you know, share the good times and the pain, right?
Because again, you don't want anybody
who's only around when you're up, right?
You want someone who will get down in trenches with you.
And you want to be like that for somebody else, right?
Those are how true bonds and friendships
and brother and sisterhoods are formed, right?
And so, but again, all of this starts with you.
You have to be willing to take,
at least take the first step, right?
You don't have to go through the whole road alone,
but you have to make the decision to go first,
take that first step and acknowledge,
acknowledge that skeleton in the closet, right?
You have to acknowledge it.
You have to say that this happened.
And then the next step is to face it, right?
I'm not saying to make light of it.
I'm not saying to just say to laugh it off
or anything like that.
I'm saying to really look at it, to really face it
and then say, you know what?
This happened and it made me feel like this.
And I wouldn't wish this on anybody else.
Or I wish that I was smarter, I was better back then.
But I know now, I know that I'm better off now.
I know that I'm, you know, 10 billion percent smarter
and better now and I won't make those same mistakes again.
Or I won't let this situation happen again.
And so once you acknowledge it, you face it,
then you have to accept it, right?
And I honestly think out of the three,
that might be the hardest part,
is accepting the fact that, okay, this is a part of me now.
You know, we can't change it.
It's part of our life, it's part of our story.
And it may not be something you want to go back
and revisit, but you can't erase it.
So, but once you learn to accept it in any capacity, right?
That had to be all at once.
Because again, all of this is a journey,
all of this is a journey.
I'm not telling you to completely change your mindset,
completely change how you're thinking about things,
but just to be open, right?
To accepting it, even just a little bit a day, right?
You'll find that a giant weight
has been lifted off your shoulders
and you can breathe freely.
You can breathe, you know, fully again.
And now, honestly, now the fun part starts, right?
Now they're rebuilding and building yourself up
and being able to move, learn how to move throughout life
without that chain, without that weight,
and really live, right?
You get to live life instead of surviving it.
And once you make that mindset shift, then everything,
everything in the sun is yours.
So again, I just want you guys to really take that to heart
and really, and just really work on it, you know?
You just realize that, hey, this may be your journey,
but you're not alone.
What?
Anyway, that's all I got for you guys today.
So I want to thank you for tuning in to today's episode.
And I pray that you got what you needed out of it
and that hopefully you learned something new about yourself.
And hey, feel free to subscribe to the podcast
and leave a review.
I would love reading you guys' reviews and comments.
It helps me improve each and every episode.
And always remember, you are the main character
of your story, and that story doesn't end until he says so.
All right, be blessed.
And I'll see you guys next time.