The case for freedom of experimentation regarding lifestyles

This is an answer to a post @snowpea made in response to one of mine: https://steemit.com/relationships/@snowpea/the-case-for-monogamy, I opened a separate post for it because it´s so long that I didn´t wanna clutter her feed with it.

I can see your point, and respect it. I believe in diversity of opinions we find the roads to do something different. It´s true that many people don´t grow up in loving homes and want to kill themselves while growing up. I should know, I was one of them. All adictions are there to cover a deep hole in one´s soul. I´ve also been down the road of addictions, and I came back, that´s where I learned self control, to not use a temporary high to cover a much more deep sorrow, and instead work on myself to grow better as a person each day, and I know that challenge, what brings one to love oneself, and in turn opens the door compassion and love to your peers, as you start to recognize them as akin souls with challenges to overcome and explorations-in-life to do. As for the other fruits of the spirit: peace, patience and faithfunless. I can say now that I am in inner peace, I love tranquility and thoughtfulness, and meditate regularly. About patience: well, I´ve still got to learn that one, my spirit has a very restless side(most of people who grew up in chaos do) and I´m very impatient, that´s one of the reasons I meditate regularly, not to quell it but to temper it, to show it other ways. About Faithfulness: my faithfulness as such is to never let a friend, lover, or a person which I´m fond of suffer needlessly if I can do something to help it, and always be there for those important moments in life where they really need a hand. That is what faithfullness really mean to me: to know that I can count on a person to always be there when they need me.

I expose myself as an example not to preach, I´m not posing myself as an example of way of life, and I´m not even to trying to convince anyone of which ways are better(well, I was in my original article, but in this one I come from kinship so that you understand that many people who are undertaking an alternate lifestyle are not monsters. We always tend to alienize what is not familiar to us, and we also always interpret thing only from the point of view of oneself. It´s actually having multiple points of view an important aspect of being able to analyze and choose better what we want or what we want to try or not.)

About monogamy, I did call it obsolete, an un-natural, but to be fair, I strongly believe that in where deep inner needs are concerned, there is no one-size-fits-all, and that´s the mistake most(if not all) people make: "trying to impose on others what´s good for myself". Different people have different needs. Monogamy feels un-natural to me, but it doesn´t mean it should for the rest of the people. Ultimately, we should all follow what deeply inside feels natural to us.

I stongly believe that trying something, or even staying on one "right" track, motivated by fear is unempowering thing to do. Let me ellaborate with a physical example: If you are avoiding martial arts because of the fear to break a bone, or the fear that it will turn you more violent, you are gonna miss one of the most empowering experiences you can do in life. It can teach you self control, confidence in your body, respect for one´s strength(and others). But it´s not the experience in itself that changes us, its how we process it and the wisdom with which we undertake it. There are wonderful martial schools filled with deeply phylosophical senseis which can teach us a whole lot further than martial arts, and there are also jock gyms filled with testosterone junkies which all they wanna do is hurt themselves and others for fun. So, being emotionally intelligent is about knowint the difference between one dojo and another, and being philosophically intelligent it´s about knowing that there is no generalization that could encompass them all, even if it feels that way on the surface. And if you succumb to your fears, you will never try it in the first place(providing you were interested in it to begin with).

Losing oneself a bit is not generally a bad thing, providing you got a compass, and are a proficient explorer in the wilderness.

As you have guessed, this post is not about martial arts, I´m just using it as a metaphor. Its about accepting that we are all the same deep inside, but also we are all different, and that is why we shouldn´t impose lifestyles on others, or even try to convince them not to experiment just out of plain fear(or even force them to experiment). Sorry if my original post seemed to try to do that.

@Snowpea , even though I know we are never gonna agree on that specific subject(monogamy), I send to you a warm hug in acceptance that you have every right to follow the path to where your individual soul guides you.