Pleasure in life is a virtue. It’s a source of motivation, personal renewal, strength. Pleasure pursued passionately, though, leads to dissipation. Strength without application serves not to foster growth but stifle it, blinds one to the substance of the very life they chose to take pleasure in. This is why we speak of people as being jaded. Pleasure without context is meaningless and actually dulls the innate virtue that we would have been able to share with others. It leads us to a forgetfulness of our own feelings. When you enjoy everything, can you know joy?

Would that be like comfort eating? But not taking the time to slow down and taste your favourite food? That is a fine example.

I know joy when I can choose to not eat things I don’t enjoy. The joy of choice. Choice itself outside of context leads to the same ends. It can be a vice. All the freedom possible leads to none of the wisdom to guide those choices because you divorce yourself from the world in objectifying everything as a choice.

I find, as I’ve gotten older, I objectify less and just go for the thing I want. This leads us back to true virtue. Virtue is a necessity, but the necessities are not virtuous. To love is a necessity, it’s not a choice. There is no choice to love or not to love. We are beings of love. The pursuit of excellence is a pursuit of excess. Can you pursue the ideal and adequately love the real?

I do wonder how people become homosexual just by the fact that humans love to procreate. Is that drive getting less so our love extends to connection more? I wonder at the biological reason for same sex love, not the individual reasons for it. Sexuality transcends issues of virtue.

But then same sex couples also want children to raise. There is no reason to believe they cannot show the same tolerance and patience of any other parent of that gender.

So maybe this is all natural to love whomever you love. That’s the essence of virtue. Love is virtue, and I am not speaking strictly of sexual love nor am I excluding it. Can one pursue moral excellence and preserve the sense of love?

Love is not bound by gender or species. Not all sex is love or virtuous. No, but all love is virtuous. Skills are not virtues. Sex as an act is a skill, learned, thus the awkward experiences we have when we lose our virginity or when we have trouble discussing sex with our partners.

Eating the apple! I am strongly in favour of eating the apple, because there is another apple. But this can only be attained through the wisdom gained through experience.

I like making pies with my apples. You can make “the apple” into whatever you want, and just like with pie, if it’s freely accepted then all is well, but force feeding a pie is assault.

Sex is a tough subject for me in the realm of virtue because I know the view of the man’s thoughts do not match the view of my thoughts. Well, I have no intention of picking a fight. I will offer that sexism swings both ways, and assumptions about male sexuality are as unjustified as assumptions about female sexuality. I know the experience of my genetic sex, equally enlightening.

Whatever you do, let it be for love. I don’t mean romantic or sexual love, I mean the love that even a little child knows. The innocent will smile with glee as they chase each other through fields of flowers playing tag. Adults can embrace this as well, engaging in the moments of life not because of some arbitrary value society may have assigned it, but for the intrinsic value we all intuitively perceive.

Feel your heart, not your members. If you prefer science, feel the composite cycle of your total being/biology. Embrace the entire consciousness of your living organism, and not just some single aspect.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well, and that’s coming from my heart.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~