I follow my superstitions as strictly as any religion. To be clear, I am not the kind to throw the salt I've spilled. Traditions are there to make old people feel valid. The world presents me with cues, I follow them if they feel like the "correct thing". I do not, after all, want to exceed my dao. The point I've made for my life is to cause as little suffering as possible. The universe gives me treasures, I'd be a child to handle them carelessly.
I observe the world as a story. If I don't understand something, I wait, and if it's at all important it comes back up, and into a more clearly defined role. I act as any character written into my setting might act. Doing so, following the "correct thing", has been a blessing. I have helped people, I have placed checks. I have removed obstacles. I have helped people realize their freedom.
Once, alone, in bed, and painfully awake, I felt as if I were being asked by my world what role I would fill. I felt as if the options were: one who interacts and takes love and makes scars and makes decisions, or one who gives himself to be used by the universe to help move everyone, everything along. I easily decided on the latter. I didn't need a great romance to have my life mean something. If I was helping my world, I was with my God. I have lived this as much as possible. Following the cues, I have been with women, but it always seems to be for their sake: to bring them out of awful relationships, to make them comfortable with who they are, to help them handle an unkind society.
Now I feel my human self banging on the walls of my psyche. I try to remember that most of these desires for courtly romance are a bill of goods sold by those with something to gain by having the population believe that their life should be solely dedicated to finding their Great Love. My humanity shouts back, "to be a person is to buy into people!".
I am not a person, or a friend. I am a guard rail to bounce off of for the people I love. What would my life become if I decided to live it for myself, and interact, and take love, and make scars, and make decisions? Could I even handle it? Can I even break this habit that I only "believe in" because it might as well be anything?
Do I even want to?
