The Better Part

LOVE, SEX, SOLITUDE

Love matters to me, but I can't control it, except as a quality of thought and action embodied by my own frail character and offered freely to the world.  It would be a great privilege and blessing to share my life and work with a lover.  But, I don't have a lover.  I never have had a lover.  I don't know how to get a lover.  It is not a question of sexual preference for me, and I would embrace either a male or a female.  It's about the quality of affection, not the gender.  I am sexually predisposed to males, but that is a natural accident, not a divine decree.  I can choose whether or not to indulge my sexual predilection for males, and the extent to which I want to indulge it.

But, none of this sexual parsing has anything to do with romance.  What about love?  What about romance?  Is it denied to some poor souls, like me?  And, what do we poor, lonely souls do to fill the void?  How does one make a virtue out of loneliness and solitude?  By doing something good.  What?  Whatever you like.  Choose something healthy.  Choose a way of life that fulfills you.  What to choose?  That's an important question.  Does casual sex have a place in the dispositions of a lonely soul?  Should it?  Is abstinence a virtue?  How is it achieved?  Abstinence must be a balance between fulfillment and the determination to refrain from problematic behavior.  Nancy Reagan was right.  Sometimes the right choice boils down to just saying, no.  It doesn't have to be an argument, the consequence of ideal circumstances, or politically correct.  It's simply a matter of choosing the better part of life's imperfect alternatives.  What will you choose?