Blame and desire.

Blame and desire are very lethal in a certain combination. That is, when you blame yourself, for denying desires.

Desire is not to be taken lightly. It is the best estimation of the inventory of your self-appraisal; what you think you are worth, not in the light of just men, but of men, women and existence.

If you deny a desire while maintaining responsibility, you are worth it and deserve it. That is, freedom. Freedom. Men and women have died for it, for a reason. Even if only to have protected a system of Rome, it was still done to protect some of the best minds and all of the best results, no matter how misguided, maladaptive, violent and genocidal at times. 🙂

I go by this measuring stick that through much experience, I can say has been efficacious in predicting a repeated outcome: It is when you feel a pal or a canopy has been thrown over you in a process of denying not just a thing, or rather, an object, but a value, most defined by the reasonable list of reasons why you persist in existing in this world. Alive. Not just surviving, which is not the point of human living as we all know and all have to deny in some increment.

But your estimation of it, your concretely manifested desire of it and hence, celebration, and hence, love of it–is what gives life its meaning in any meaningful social context.

Pure pleasure is seen in drugs. But it is our concepts and knowledge of the world that gives that pure adrenaline and serotonin its true meaning.

Do not blame yourself for denying so long as you can support it independently. But do blame yourself when you do it at another person’s expense. This is mostly because you will live in a dreamworld, and accuse others of doing the same.