Self: Another Life Lesson
A Gay Pagan Opinion 11/01/02
by R. A. Melos


Every year it's the same thing. October comes and I get depressed. It's gotten to the point where I associate October with depression, and therefore dread the approach of the Fall season in general.

The thing is, as a Pagan, I know each day is a celebration. Every moment of life is a festival of joy and a tribute to the powers of the universe. However, knowing something and believing it in my heart are two different things.

Just because I know something exists, especially something so esoteric as an eternal life celebration, doesn't make its existence any more or less real until I believe in it in my heart as well. It's like traffic lights. Legally we all know you stop on red and go on green, but it is the belief in that system we have in our hearts, the respect for that system, which truly gives it life. Without respect for the esoteric we don't live the celebrations.

Yet ingrained in me is a depression of centuries of oppression by my fellow human beings, and for some reason colder weather brings this out in me. It has been much better this year, perhaps because I'm accepting the positive influences of the metaphysical universe in my heart, I'm accepting life on my own terms, and being content with things as they are instead of constantly struggling to change them.

I'm not a person who likes constant struggle. In fact, I don't like struggle at all. I like things to be nice and uncomplicated, but things are never what they seem to be. I may like an uncomplicated and simple lifestyle, but nothing about my life is uncomplicated or simple. There are layer upon layer of complications to be sorted out and dealt with at every corner. I don't simply exist at a whim, nor do most people.

While it would be nice to exist in the metaphysical terms, we also exist in the physical, and this is the realm in which we must make our decisions and handle our lives. So now I choose. I decide what effects me. I make the decision whether or not to dance in the moonlight.

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