Saying “I love you” or “you’re my friend” is easy and thus mostly unimportant. Those words are symbols for something that’s already been proven through hard-won experience and  growth together. False friends are easy to pick out because they give up on the friendship at the first sign of difficulty, showing they care much more about their own comfort than the possibilities waiting behind tough circumstances.

An honest friendship will never allow temporary circumstances to interfere with it, because the bond of friendship exists outside of time, shining light on the hidden forces encircling us all and teaching us about ourselves, about life, about one another.

In order to live a rich life in the company of those whose love you share, cast aside fear and embarrassment, be true to yourself and good to those with whom you would share the path through this life. Every courageous action begets an infinity more, and every friendship echoes in eternity.

He read back to himself what he had written: elegant, heartful words, he thought. Ornate woodwork on a coffin, decorating a stale and lifeless determination. This is what I want to leave behind me? Walter thought about his life, which could be described in a word as normal. Suffocatingly determined, empty and slavish. Homeschoolcollegecareer, in their proper order: what for?

Sounds echoed in his ears: sobs, heeled footfalls,  slamming door. The impetus of his murderous, self-murderous decision had faded into the background of his thoughts. Walter knew his wife (ex-wife?) wasn’t the reason he wanted to die. Rather, she was a compelling argument against death; now gone, Walter stared into the abysmal vacuum in his life which was once her place in it. His first inclination was to surrender to this abyss, to throw himself into it and let it swallow him up: freedom, blessed freedom!

As he set about translating his fateful desires to words, though, he could feel the disequalibrium within himself. Some small neglected voice, a malnourished child in his soul was asking to be heard. At first this child was polite but progressively she became more urgent, maturing as necessaity demanded it to.

You’ve ignored me for an entire lifetime, and now you’ll end that life without once doing things my way. What have I ever done to deserve such indifference? Now you will listen, I won’t give you any choice but to consider me this time. These other souls of yours, the ones which have failed you now, they could never bring you happiness or fullness or completion. When did you stop wanting to blaze trails? You’ve done things the right way, you’ve done things the way you’re supposed to: what has that brought you? Emptiness and despair. The voices in your spirit which told you to follow, to obey, they will only help you to survive. I’m the voice who will help you to live.

You want to die? Do it right: live dangerously. The deepest passions of your heart, the brilliant ones and the dark ones upon which the brilliant ones rest: express them, chase after them, let them guide you. What are you afraid of? Not death, certainly not, considering what you were about to do. Disapproval? But what does that matter to one free of fear? Or have you been trying to avoid pain? Yes, life is painful, that I will admit. And the problem of pain, of suffering, not only your suffering but everyone’s, is something you’ll spend your whole life struggling with. Don’t let it keep you from your dreams! Don’t let fear smother you!

But enough, I know I’ve convinced you already. The pen has fallen from your hands, you’ve turned your eyes to the sky. Throw the note away- and live your life so that it needs no explaining. Live your life like a long suicide note, a light and happy one, with long sentences of struggle punctuated by awful heartbreak and ecstatic bliss. And don’t write it alone, write it in the open for everyone to see. Write it with people who love you. And cherish it… cherish it, because everything that’s ever written is written on sand.

In light of such pain love’s worth is redeemed by those few precious moments of absolute perfection, when everything is easy and free and happy, when you feel unquenchable thirst for your love, when you dance across water and fly through galaxies, when you laugh at mortality because you’ve already experienced life in all the fullness it could possibly afford. No hyperbole could overestimate the power of such moments, they are the culmination of every struggle and the answer to every “why?” Love is completion.

A token for love lost.

Humans, like other animals, act to fullfill their desires. Humans are unlike other animals in that they can consciously choose whether or not to pursue a certain desire, for whatever reason they want. They may pursue a set of rules by which to live: a morality.

There is no one overarching morality to which everyone must subscribe; nor is there anything wrong with following a moral code. There is no shame in sleeping with everyone around you; nor is there shame in abstaining until you meet somebody who’ll commit to you forever, or abstaining from sex entirely. (nota bene: the only shame is to submit to fear or laziness).

Committing to a morality is to your soul as committing to a rhyme and meter scheme is to a poem: it’s a creative limitation. And, perhaps paradoxically, that limitation opens a whole world of freedoms and possibilities of expression (See Nietz BGE 188).

Shakespeare wrote mostly in iambic pentameter: difficult, sure, and often he strayed (artfully) from strict formal adherence to his chosen meter. The beauty of his work speaks for itself. Compare that with free verse poetry, which is usually just prose without clarity or direction, making a play at artistic substance by sounding vague and mystical. Perhaps artistic meaning and truth is possible in free verse, but more often its an excuse to write badly and lazily while keeping the approval of the standards-free “artistic community.” Make whatever analogy to life with and without moral rules that suits you.

Morality at its simplest is an ideal which a person pursues, an image to sculpt out from the raw stone of his human potential. Or, better, it’s a means towards living and expressing the ideal lying nascent within us, similar to how clothing may both mask and amplify the beauty of the body it covers. The one universal creed: express yourself!

Hypothetically, if a species was subdivided into two roughly equal groups, each with a characteristic set of hormonal chemicals which influence their physical development, temperament, and behavior, you’d assume there was a reason for that subdivision, right? I don’t want to seem as though I’m making a set of rules here, but doesn’t it just make sense that the estrogenic, nurturing, sympathetic gender would be primarily responsible for maintaining the family and the household? Doesn’t it make sense that the aggressive, prideful gender, driven by testosterone and a natural contempt for his own feelings, would be assigned the role of providing the family what it needs, and protecting it from threats?

Or does it make more sense to posit a shallow, thoughtless ideology like “everybody is equal,” and then to chase headlong after that fantasy without questioning whether it has any realistic foundation? Or whether that’s even something we want?

As I said, my goal here isn’t to make a set of rules or tell people how to live. Of course there are women who are perfectly well-suited to the business world, and there are men who are better-suited for the home than for the office. My goal is, rather, to argue against the mindset which says that nature needs correcting, that we know better than the forces which shaped our development and brought us to where we are today. If men and women are different, then let them be different. It is only by taking on tasks to which we’re naturally well-equipped that we’ll find any kind of long-term success, either in this life or across generations.