If one cannot indulge their own feelings, how can they indulge any other? If your path doesn’t offer you any freedom, how can you tolerate freedom in another? You cannot give what you do not have, and if yours is a life of ill considered abstinence then what can you give anyone? If in the process of considering your desires you come to realize that whim doesn’t serve you, and you want bigger things, then how is that unwise?
In indulgence you learn a profound lesson about choice. You are making a choice about who you are, and are lessened by any self rejecting choice.
“This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul.” Walt Whitman ( Poet, 1819-1892)
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