Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.
~Ayn Rand

the antonym of loyalty, is faithlessness.

faithless·ness n.
Synonyms: faithless, unfaithful, false, disloyal, traitorous, treacherous, perfidious

I went on a long walk today. I was thinking about a conversation, or maybe a letter. I was thinking about something I wanted to say.
I was thinking about values and connection and loyalty. about what that all means. I was thinking what loyalty means to me.

Loyalty is faith in the integrity of another person.
there is something inherently spiritual about that. it’s spiritual and it’s indefinable. Loyalty is an act of faith. not in a murky kind of way, but in a way that can’t be grasped or measured. faith in another person can’t be measured. the only thing we can measure is action, or inaction, we can measure what people do. and then we can take those things as markers of the depth of their character.
the disloyal, the faithless, can only portray an image, a surface. they have no depth,
they only have their own reflection.

its 3:13 am and I am writing about codependency.

Codependency is a low grade infection. it’s an addiction to hope that the other person will change.
Codependency is a set of maladaptive, compulsive behaviors. codependent people believe that they are extremely loyal, therefore they remain in harmful situations for way too long. codependent people have the tendency to become involved with people who are unreliable, emotionally unavailable or needy.

and it occurred to me that I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to be around other people. how to communicate. how to hear people clearly through all of the static and mess. how to be myself, cleanly and clearly, in the company of other people. how to mitigate the damage we all come with...


When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.

Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired - though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it's just
A compensating make-believe.

Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on - in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It's clear you're not the virtuous sort.

Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
~philip larkin, 1951

sometimes I am better, by myself.

I am allergic to the cold. I’m allergic to being cold, actually.
I’ve developed a strange allergy, out of nowhere to being cold.
If I get too cold I could go into anaphylactic shock and die. I wish I was kidding. I wish I was being dramatic, but I’m not. it’s a true story.

I don’t know when it started. sometime this year I guess... but I didn’t know until recently.
I started noticing things like when I washed my hands in cold water, my hands would swell up, or if I had the AC on in my car, I’d start to get itchy. but then I went swimming. and my whole body broke out into hives. I had a full out allergic reaction to cold water.

and it’s getting worse. the other day I picked up a few things from the store, and I carried a bottle of cold water under my arm. by the time I got home I had a hot rash of hives where the bottle touched my skin.
I keep testing it with ice cubes and cold packs, I keep pushing it because I don’t believe it.

it’s strange. I don’t like it. it makes me feel frail somehow...

and I wonder what it means.

my body is protesting something, for some reason. it’s not tolerating the cold. coldness, whatever.
that must mean something.
don’t you think?

there is this little shop down the street from my office that sells and rents mobility scooters. I drive by it everyday, and sometimes, when I go out for coffee, I see the little scooters being driven out in to the little parking lot. it’s a funny spot. it’s neither here nor there. but it’s down the street from my office.
so today I went there, to procure a scooter for my client.
I went in and was chatting, as I am prone to do (I’ve never met a stranger...). I was in a great mood, so I was chatting and joking around and telling the guys all about what I’m doing and what I need. and then the guy gave me his card and I read the name on the card, and the blood drained from my head.

and I slowly asked (without thinking) are you related to so and so? and he looked at me and said: “oh, you know my brother?”

and for whatever reason, in that moment, I felt like I might just dissolve into water and splash all over the floor. and for whatever reason, my hands started to tremble and I felt slightly dizzy and I seriously contemplated booting it for the door.
he then asked, “how do you know him?” and I paused (ok, froze) and he smiled and said “romantically?” and I flushed a serious shade of red and simply said: “yep”.

I said that I knew him, that I hadn’t seen him in a few months, since he reconciled with his ex. I said that we had been great friends, but that I probably wouldn’t ever see him again.

he asked me if his brother was nice to me and I said he was a great guy and that I wished him happiness. we chatted for a while about things and he was super easy going and warm and nice.
and I felt like a giant loser.
I didn’t say much about anything, but I felt like I was made of glass... it was so obvious how nervous I was... blushing and shaking.

and I wonder, why did I have that reaction? why did I start to tremble? what fear is in me? what was that all about?

the body holds memories, it holds feelings. and sometimes, it spits them back out.

I believe in the sovereignty of good.

I believe in choices. I believe in working for what is good and right. I believe in being aware of our choices and our impact. I used to think that all we needed was love, but I don’t believe that anymore. it’s more complicated than that. we are more complicated than that.
I believe that anyone can love, but not everyone can love well. some love can smother and make us sick. some love is unwell or damaged.
a child will still love the parent that abuses them. the woman who came into my work tonight loves her boyfriend, she believes that they’re meant for each other, even though he gave her brain damage from beating her in the head with a baseball bat. she uses love as the justification to stay with him.
so really, does love conquer all?
not all love is good love.

ethics, passion, morality and a certain amount of craftsmanship needs to go into love, to make it good.
but how do we define that?
judgments of value, on exactly what good means, depend on the will and the choice of the individual. and figuring that out takes work.

what I’m getting at is, I used to hold the belief that things unfold as they should, but I don’t think that I believe that anymore. I believe that we have more responsibility than that.
we are not just leaves floating on the wind. I believe that there is a purpose, but we need to guide that purpose. Goodness is not an object of insight or knowledge, it is a function of will. it’s what we do. and there is a vast divide between intention, and action.