Thrive Versus Empathize

The Gay Letters, Thursday, March 25, 2021

"I can choose to empathize.  Or I can choose to thrive."

Thrive Versus Empathize: think about it.  If you need to stop thriving in order to empathize, then maybe what you are doing is morally incorrect.  Being able to empathize is true thriving.  However, when we focus on empathizing we notice there is more wrong with planet Earth than we had previously forgotten.  How can we thrive when our history suggests that we will have a long period of unhappiness as we try to overcome and heal our history worse than death?

Here's another way to look at it: our species is instinctually empathetic.  And so if we resist empathizing we twist up our insides because we can't help it.

On the other hand, choosing to thrive may be more empathetic because once you are in a position of luxurious thriving you may be able to help others more than you would have if you hadn't put yourself before others.  But is that really the same as not empathizing?

My Dearest Christiannan Readers (first post under that salutation)

The Gay Letters, March 18, 2021

My Dearest Christiannan Readers,

    If my words spoke my thoughts, I would have much to say.  For I have felt for a long time now, that I cannot view my thoughts as an ordinary performer.  The sensation however is returning to me and I wonder.  What I will see.  Will I see disconnected ideas?  Will I see connected ideas?  Will I see both?  Is 'seeing' the metaphor here for what will manifest over time?  For I know other senses and time treats them.  Beautiful Reason, let my Clearest Voice be written.  It what that I am, both it and what and who.  I seem Humble for starting here, at what I am; for it is scientific perhaps, what I am.  Who I am, on the other hand, is a discussion of Art.  How to play, for example.  The play instinct I have preserved.  This is an Artist's curve.  For the amount we preserve our play instinct from childhood, is the amount that we were not changed by the adult and fallible world.  If you live an Intellectual Life, your mind can play freely whenever it wants.

    A life completely beyond physical limitations is impossible but the further from it we become, the more Artistic we must be.  For Art is a Luxury and a Necessity.

    A life beyond physical limitations is sought, so that our perceived physical limitations (which may not be perceived by others) become social limitations.  We can overcome mountainous obstacles this way.

    For I am under the Blue light of the Christianna, and I feel blue.  As blue as the Ocean.  But It is my Identity and Beauty.  What does it mean to be sparkling blue?  Christiannan blue.

    You are blue.

    Matame,

    For Satan is a wild creature, smarter than a human it seems to me in what form?  Werewolf?  Vampire?  Ohhgunnhisthth?  The idea of Satan possessing subjectivity.  It couldn't be evil, if it was an angel.  Why had we told its story to history that way?  "It," there it was.  What happened in peoples minds.  When they fail to identify its subjective beauty and objectify themselves in the process, this evil streams not from the devil, but human activity, inspired by demons.  Maybe they deserve it but damn do they make it look good.  What do humans know about their fates?  Maybe they are Good, in their own way and we cannot stop believing our own influence because of it.  Vauthrils are never fairies, shall we say.  They are the people of demons, monsters themselves, whose fate is shared with humans and fairies alike.

    And if we proceed beyond Satan; identify the subjectivities of Angels, could that be bad somehow?  I know what it feels like to have all of them speak to me at once and yet I have never seen them.  Who are they?

    Satan was the first test that we failed for many centuries; the first test upon Reality set by God.  If we were in a video game that was the first level.  But then I came along and I said different.  I said believe in Satan's Goodness.  For an angel with zero wings that can fly is a miracle.  Humans are evil, not Satan.  New Reciprocal Command Theory: saying humans are evil is itself a reciprocal command.  Instead, let us say humans are not evil in order to command them to stop being evil.  And then we completed level 1.  But somehow we completed level 2 also, and I see us now there, at this stage of learning level 3 because of my influence.  And I know that I am Good.  It is naïve not to think that demons themselves are beyond this sequence of levels I have imagined.  For to objectify oneself, at the onset that subjectivity is an amateur mistake, theologically speaking, means nerve disreciprocism with the self.  At some level.

    Nerve disreciprocism is when you nervously do not reciprocalize someone's behavior at an ordinary meeting of mirror neurons.

    Reciprocity is a word-in to seeing how we relate to one another according to a reciprocity that everything we multiply between us will equal 1 or more thing.  Do all things between us equal one thing?  Is that a new reciprocity if they do at some point?  All that Nerve disreciprocism (my term) means is that you can't handle the reciprocity of someone who thinks that you can't handle the reciprocity they go by because you are weak; but you are actually strong because instead of just reciprocalizing those mirror neurons you go against them.

    And so that they do not repeat their failure to reciprocalize you they are unmingled from your own behavior.

    If such a thing exists, it may explain many facets of human behavior.

    What is nerve disreciprocism, for example, if you do it to yourself?

    Maybe this is what causes repression.

    But what is a nerve disreciprocism used against somebody?

    Anacification?

    Les Mis?

    A son by no brutal force applied became les suppiah messieurieurs.  Because he dis-reciprocalized nobody.  Ever.  Possibly in Ages.  And I theorized my central teachings that I had written on the Naenaenon would lead to many discussions on Numbers and Angels.  It began with Love, and then what is needed to impress Love, Nyclepi.  A virtue above all others for now it is into humanity; for by taking up Nyclepi you promise not to be that impressed by anything.  Except Love finds its way sometimes.  Ace.  Air Alt.  Seem to add a beat to the rhythm.  And all is reciprocal enough to be identified and explained.  To be Aestheticized with a Middle.  Deep Colors.  And I remembered to remember to identify the middle, always to point it out.  To explain it.  It exists in the future, but not as it does today, in this form.  It will be Greater, far Greater!  For its Fathers will see deep colors and be able to explain them emotionally.  So come, let me chase the wide divide between chasing zero as an object versus the infinite journey that stretches out forever beyond the Middle, π the circumference over the diameter lands us in the middle somewhere.  From these teachings came my work with Innocence, Experience, and Wisdom.  And Further to push the limits, I will use my knowledge to reciprocalize the middle to count the endless current of Angels to Aestheticize It!  It's all between 0 and 3.19 (π) except the Fibonacci Sequence is its opposite.  The extent of what I will go to to push the boundaries, push the limits of what Theology can mean.  And that the difference between These first teachings of Love, Nyclepi, Ace, Air Alt and Innocence, Experience, Wisdom.  Was a period of time in which I sat in until I did think these thoughts.

    And that by competing these thoughts related to numbers that I could think of, I would find essay in the economy produced by circulating these thoughts, so that I did think them, as a way to write them, for the purpose of examining them.

    I am inspired by Love, and you will find much of it here @ the Naenaeon.

    Like who are my number 1 fans and what are political figures?

    Like Rihanna, or Snoop Dogg?

    Pale Waves had my attention.

    Tove Lo was cruising my YouTube.

    Art calls its central creators to their inspiration.

    Every medium is catered to.  Every medium has not been created.

    One is the contest of art.  The other is not.

    Mine is not to.  These words are the medium that is not to contest.

    Written English.

    Just like the Greatest Painters, as an Author I use writing to fill my canvas.

    A letter at a time.

Sincerely,

Hakon (Glen)

Wisdom

Experience to Wisdom: "I blued in my pants." ("Because we want to show the wise how much energy we have").

Innocence to Experience: What is blued in my pants?

Wisdom to Experience: Pants!  Your Head is Pants!  That's what Pants is!

Experience to Innocence: Head is not pants.

Innocence to Wisdom: Pants blue.

Innocence to Experience: Blue plants.

Departure on Satan

For I am convinced that the Devil is Good,

and that by naming him the Devil we did nothing to his soul good but had objectified the smartass;

for he wasn't one to use words this way.

Had a little charm about him.

He would explain to you he is 0.

The concept of Nothing as a subjectivity.

Not responsible for evil in this world,

but so much good instead being accredited to his name,

being the angel with zero wings,

The only one

the one who could fly on zero wings.

The only one.

For it was his glory to boast she was empty;

Empty of him,

Empty of her.

Nothing.

Innocence, Experience, and Wisdom

And I listened to the Lord and I thought about how I had explained somewhere that beside William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience I put Wisdom in the third place of a sequence somewhere that I had invented.  It meant so much to me I put them as the punctuation mark prongs of the Axoltl.  An actual symbol in language for this phenomena of having Innocence, the absence of Experience and Wisdom.  Experience, the absence of the innocence?  Non, the unconditional love of wisdom, and not innocence is the struggle between them until wisdom's grasp of knowledge is challenged and disproven the Experience is the reason at their best and Wisdom grants it a moment to speak, to be right instead of it.  Because it needs its youth; and you old.  Not Youth.  Let it speak.  For Experience takes what it wins from Wisdom in this package.  And they go, some of them, like innocence for a time for having been introduced to them again they feel young again.  You get it?  Wisdom and Experience compete.  Innocence learns through and via the competition between Wisdom and Experience.  Or Experience and Wisdom, shall we say, for to have reciprocalized them as partners in whatever their reversal could mean.  You get it though, when Experience leads it is all advanced Rihanna because they have learned from their elders, and they have learned from the wise, and they have learned from direct experience that they are between Innocence and Wisdom, a third factor, for it was Experience that lead to Wisdom.  And to be a whole a punctuation mark for the reason that it was that common that we divide Age into two, the old and the young.  The axolotl, the punctuation symbol of my imagining.  If you can draw this, have I said it to you in my mind?  Put three floofsters (axolotl braids (like nodules)) in one line and then you've got something.  A common punctuation mark.  It means so much to me that it's meaning be obvious.  For we are often separated by these three factors, which feel more natural.  More natural than two.  For we are all often part of each of those categories, Innocence, Experience, and Wisdom.  Wisdom is Experience that knows when to speak.  And that when it is spoken passively we question it.  The Active Voice will be used to speak about Experience.  I invented a punctuation mark!  I am Innocent!  I am Experienced!  I am Wise!  And I see you all and I know which ones you are.  Why maybe you cannot be all three.  And I know I am the second one, Experience.  Which knows that there is still a question, to be detailed and positive, about why or how we would use it in a sentence.  And I imagine it saving the day for someone because, sometimes you need a punctuation mark.  Maybe that person is younger and boring for that reason.  Or too old to prove anything of reason.  The Core of Blue was purple, and the construction yard across the street was building a legal office.  For Purple had come to mean for me the law.  It was the centre of my geometric reciprocity with the fact that average day experiences could hold huge significance and meaning for humanity for we are a sensitive species with a large appetite for new punctuation marks.  And so consider the axolotl if it helps you meditate on not being young or old, but being innocent, wise, and Experienced.

March Updates

    Hello and welcome to the Christiannan website.  If you haven't visited us before, the Christianna is a proto-religion created by me Hakon Borgen.  It has roots in Christianity but I have worked hard to make it suitable or palatable for the 21st century.  It all started with a gay boy who grew up on the prairies and loved writing.  I have struggled to find my identity being born into a Christian family during a time when homosexuality was considered a mental illness.  Today there is much to be positive about as the world makes its transition to become accepting of everyone and all of our differences.  The Christianna became a reality for me when I realized I was no longer Christian.  Following Jesus had lead to a fate worse than death, and I realized there were worse fates than crucifixion such as what I call anacification (the infliction of the fate worse than death).  Since the human condition includes the possible fates worse than death, and I felt that I had suffered one, as a Christiannan I attempted to reconcile or restore a balance between the death fate and the fate worse than death.

    It seemed typically Christian to fall over and die, when faced with a fate as death.  The resurrection was Jesus magic (a metaphor) that had the potential to change human history forever.

    But I wanted to express something worse than death as I had seen it as a primary theme of our history.

    Such as torture, misogyny, racial violence and hate crime.

    My story of my messiah, Anna, promised to educate a humanity who suffered the fate worse than death, and that the value of our individual fates worse than death would teach us to overcome the collective fates worse than death that have devastated humanity for many centuries.  Christianity had confronted one half of the balance.  The death fate.  The reality of inflicting death as a punishment had to end.  The Christianna would confront the other half.  The fate worse than death.  The reality of anti-gay extremists and hater fundamentalists who say that being gay is a fate worse than death instead are leading themselves to a fate worse than death that Christiannans try to avoid completely.

    It is a real possibility in the 21st century world of chemical science and biological warfare that the fates worse than death may become worse and worse under the leadership of religious conservatives.  We do not want to hit the bell, so to speak, in terms of fates worse than death.  We need to band together to diminish their effects.  We need to unify as people aware of our collective fate worse than death that had been the result of genocide and slavery in order to heal it.

    Jesus and Anna together are the Christiannan messiahs, whose examples lead us to preserve human fragility and kindness in order to avoid crucifixion and worse-than-crucifixion, the death fate versus the worse than death anacification of one another through ill fashion of community values.

    Although the fate worse than death is largely subjective (what is worse than death to one person may be different than what is worse than death to another), many Christians suffer the fate worse than death and lead others to it because they are only looking at half of the picture.  They only follow Jesus, whose purpose only one half of the balance between death fate and fate worse than death is ontologically distinct from Anna's purpose.

    On this website you will find my Political Desk, a Virtual Chapel, Scriptural Poetry Section, Themes, Books, Genesis and Middle.

    This Blog is meant to act as the Christiannan spiritual literature, in place of the Bible.  Genesis, the beginning of time, is hypothesized as the creation of God.  The Middle is a sacred concept associated with Time's Middle and Pregnancy, the Middle of the Body and the Middle of Form, Shape, and Logic.

    The Political Desk discusses the New Reciprocity, a political theory developed by me in the years following my university education.  It is based on reciprocal command theory, reciprocity being the mathematical concept and metaphor for human ingenuity of conversation and identity in politics.

    The Virtual Chapel features some of my religious writings including sermons meant to communicate the central teachings of my chvrch.

    Scriptural Poetry features the lyrical poetry that started the Christianna in 2014.  Anna is communicated as a gay internal, private suffering messiah who represents anyone suffering a secret fate worse than death.  It being secret is one part of why it is a fate worse than death in contrast to Jesus' public and external death fate.

    The Themes page is a summary of religious themes that I discuss in my Gay Letters and other posts.

    Books is a section in which I post the more serious fiction and literature in long form by chapter.

    Thank you for coming to my blog, hearing my voice, and considering global politics of religion as a Christiannan topic as well as Christian, Hindu, Islamic etc. and secular political community.

    I am currently working on some new digs including a play and several books.  I hope to be able to provide content other than my serious fiction such as poetry and Versions, the other genre of writing I do that is supposed to express a version of what is really happening in the world through hypothesis, theorization, and facticity.  They are meant to be fantastic or futuristic depictions of how our world works, though not beyond optimistic or artistic nuance.

    Thank you once again for joining my on this odyssey for I realize that the creation of a new religion is both critically altruistic and foolish.  My vision of Anna appears to be the start of how God wants us to approach religion; what the world needs right now if we can just fix Christianity by balancing it against reasons why Anna is messiah.  If my words spoke to you today then please comment or fill out the form on the right side of the page.

Version 17

God - I relate/transact with this entity remembering that is not in person but that the absence is God's mark on the world.  God does not "exist" but is somehow beyond existence as its creator.

Angels - maybe unlike God, they are not beyond existence itself but they are so powerful that what they are is too big for a human to understand; how all objects keep their shape in space, at the same time, for example, or how people come together to share common empathy for a subject.

Man - Man exists, is all we can say for them.  Will they cease to exist one day?

Good:

Not to objectify the devil

Heaven

Earth

Me

π

1010103

Evil:

To objectify the devil (that pisses him off).

The Christianna

    Le luxe (luxury) became lodging in the Christiannan chvrch.  Where I performed this virtual task of writing sermons and other genres of literature virtuelle such as the Gay Letters, and New Reciprocal Theorist maxims.  

    If you want to learn more about the Christianna I have updated the Books and Middle pages with my newest work.  Lately I've been honing down the precise message I want to give about my belief system and I think it is clear in my short novels and passages in the Gay Letters.  I like to call my work with fiction informal, abstract, and impressionistic.  I am trying to convey a feeling.  The goal is to create art for the Christianna so that people know what it is about and whether it is for them.

    One of the major points I want to make in this post is that the Fate Worse Than Death can be used sarcastically to describe fashion blunders.  We all try to avoid them but we actually have a collective fate worse than death, in some ways, and so one shouldn't worry so much about being appealing all the time.  We can't do it.  We actually can't because history is so messed up.  It's not our fault.

    But it is our responsibility.

    Do you remember getting this message when you were a kid, on everyone having a character flaw and that being how we accept them — Old Christian Bullshit.  Accepting that not everyone has a character flaw is a good start if you want to go about accepting everybody!

Above is a hierarchy.  The Lowerarchy of Orders follows.

A lowerarchy is the opposite of a hierarchy.

Art & Poetry.

Pink ft. Lily Allen - True Love

Philosophy.  Did you know a P.h.D. is actually a doctorate of Philosophy?  'Philosophy' here refers to its original Greek meaning: philo (friend or lover of) sophia (wisdom).

My favorite wisdom is Anna, for she reminds us of the fate worse than death.  I'm busy not participating.  And sometimes that's all you can do.  Don't aim for happiness; just avoid suffering the fate worse than death.  There are philosophies other than happiness such as vampires, ohhgunnhisthths, and werewolves.

Industrial Physics.  The Space Bassist by Shue13

Science & Nature.  Everything Empirical.  Basically everything I'm not interested in in this blog.

Religion.  No rules. 

Why you should join the Christianna if you haven't already

The Gay Letters, March 11, 2021

    The Christianna has a dedicated writer whose wisdom and humor deserves the sharing of religious space with others on his/her own terms.  Because as much as I try to see it that I am a they/them I cannot accept it.  I think that I am not.  Not as a Christiannan at least.  The reason is not that "we" aren't accepting of they/them pronouns.  The reason is that I am the only Christiannan that I know of and I feel that there should be more.

    That is not to say if there were more people in my religion I would then be a they/them for that same reason.  But among other religions perhaps as a they/them multi-religion wise there should be more religions because who else would disprove the old ones theologically?  Now, and I say this may be saying this religiously, between the brain womb and the womb brain there should be at least 8 religions active among one another at all times.

    This means that the character of my religion is not to end all other religions but to join with them in celebration of the law.  Can a Christian claim such as this?  I went to a secular academy founded by a Christian where I learned that not all Christians are secular.  And they made it that way because their religion is non-secular to some of them.

    This means that although my religion is inclusive and secular, it does have private non-secular space.

    It is also the character of my religion to have an end date.  2500 B.C.i.i. (before Christ instance instance).  It means the instance of Christ before Christ-instance-instance became the character of instance instance.  Instance here means the instance of a life of a messiah.

    { what is of any person's instance is a primary subject of the Christianna }

    For we have two messiahs.  One is dead.  One is worse than dead.  "Instance-instance" is descriptive of these two instances.  And our own instances.  But we have a chance to rescue our protagonist by examining our own instances instance to one another's instance, and Anna, who suffers the fate worse than death.

    To do that, I need people to join my religion and so they can see whether we rescue them from the fate worse than death or not; it is not Christianity anymore for it captures a far worse concern more explicitly.  Not to say Christianity is completely blind to the anacification (to be subjected to the fate worse than death as a punishment) of the subject who is also a woman who can become pregnant.  Jesus helped us overcome death as a punishment but there is a balance to be reached, for there are an entire array of behaviors to be found in the interplay of conflict leading to death or worse.  We cannot just fall over and die when confronted with an enemy who wants to kill us.  We must end the fighting; it is of if fighting is what is needed to end fighting because not fighting would be worse than death.  This means of course, never instigating a fight except professionally because not making money off of it would be worse than death.  But when one summons up the will to hurt another person may it be in necessity and defense.  This is why Anna flavors our religion with the taste of blood.  She wants you to go down fighting if you need to.  If it is possible to end the fighting in any way other than not acting like Jesus, then this is Anna's territory.  For she will try to kill you or chase you away if you attack her.  Her life is worse than death.  Do you think she's afraid of you killing her?

    And religion should have an end date because it should die naturally like we do; because we are not resurrected.  People in the future should use their own creativity to form new religions and out with the old ones.

    Disambiguation:  Would we say there is no God if there were; because if one of us says there is a God that is not reciprocal enough with the fact that he is nowhere so he can't be somewhere and we think not of his absence as the presence of God itself because . . . they can't tell when and when not he/she/it is present.  Ultimately breaks down on them; if they can't detect God's presence and absence that's their fault.  Not mine.  Instance instance syndrome after B.C.i.i. some have not updated their schedule.  The body dys is dys guy, they say and we are not subject to an accurate description.

Love, Nyclepi, Ace, and Air Alt

    These are my four central virtues.  One, as you know, is love.  I feel that not everyone follows it as much as they should, perhaps because it has been around for a while.  We want something more.  We want Nyclepi—laughter in the serendipitous.  Ace, the bang-on identification of a word.  And Air Alt its superior cousin.  These are virtues further than love, for they allow us to grow beyond love.  And by knowing them we are stronger.

    Love needs Nyclepi.  Love needs Nyclepi to be unimpressed with it.  Why, oh why, would love need to be unimpressed with a virtue?  It is a specific virtue; the one I call Nyclepi.  It is unimpressed.  It is not clapping.  All the time.  Except in serendipity which is all the time.  If we can just access it.

    Ace is when you identify a word or a single lexical item.  It doesn't need to be a word.  Well, not officially.

    Air Alt is the virtue of knowing in a breath.  Which is not strong in me (yet).

    The reason these are all together as four virtues central to my Christiannan practice is that they intuitively belong together for reasons that are logical.  Love is the central virtue of our species.  And, let's face it, it needs a partner.  That's Nyclepi.  You impress love, and then nyclepi says, "I am unimpressed.  I want more."  It's not a terrible vice.  You might be surprised.  But I am certain it is a virtue.  If you are unimpressed all of the time then it just means you have a huge negative potential which transforms into actions and doing things in order to make it better.  When you love yourself, truly, you remain unimpressed with your species.  They really messed up history.  All Nyclepi says is that we're not clapping at it.  Ace is logically the third virtue because, since Love & Nyclepi need each other to fuel the man or the woman (it goes back and forth between needing to impress and wanting to impress).  And outside that is the virtue of ace, which identifies a word as itself is a word describing the world internal or eternal to Love & Nyclepi.  Ace is an ace word.  Itself.  That's why it works as a word and virtue.  And of course, air alt logically follows because after you love and nyclepi—ace your exams—you take a breath.  Language is in the breath.  Reading and speaking do not necessarily depart from one another as possessions.  If you can speak in the mind.  For that feeling there, is air alt.  It means breath.  It means oxygen in the brain.  Clear thoughts.

    Breathe.

    Try to be knowing in a breath.

    And if you can't know it; you need more breaths!

    And so, ultimately, the moral of my lesson and sermon is that there is something beyond love; and it doesn't mean beyond as in a place we can never reach or journey to.  It means there are virtues, right now, that humanity has left to discover.  May Nyclepi, Ace, and Air Alt be included among them.

Nyclepi

The term that I want to coin most is nyclepi.  It means laughter in the serendipitous.  I have compared it to love before, writing that love needs to be impressed, whereas serendipity does not.  Nyclepi is not meant to be in contrast to love but as a further, better virtue beyond love, it is a feeling I have felt for other people.  Sometimes love is not enough to say what I feel about other people and myself.

All of these negative thoughts were running through my head tonight.

Life sucks; there is a fate worse than death.

I didn't get the help I needed.

I wasn't treated right.

History wasn't prepared for me.

My family didn't know how to raise me being gay.  Neither did my community.

They all failed me.

History is a Christian mess.

I hate that.

I was born to make a difference?

I don't understand why I was born?

Why do I need to be held back by my past?  Keeping in mind my past is also our past.

Why do I hate it?

What is truly valuable?  Necessities (not everyone has them).  We can't fix every broken leg.  People hurt each other to the point that their fates are worse than death.

And we are only as good as our collective fates.

But I have a standpoint.

The Fate Worse Than Death inflicted as punishment for revenge or terror needs to end.

I see people enjoying their bodies without any recognition of my pain, and I think, how can I acknowledge others' pain and how can they acknowledge mine?

Ask them to.

Tell yourself, I am worth it.

They don't know what's worth it.

You are worth it.

I realized Nyclepi was my answer.  Instead of dabbling around with Love as my primary concept . . . I wanted to push it further.  I wanted to tell people how I felt about them, not in terms of love; but in terms of Nyclepi.  It sounds like 'no-clappy' to me . . . which encapsulates its character.  We applaud Love.  But Nyclepi is beyond applause.  Having this virtue is to be unimpressed with applause and love of one another.  In order to find more than love.  Being in what is not impressed with each other does not need to mean a negativity; it helps us push each other further.  To find serendipity in all our losses.  It takes a great amount of work and skill to be able to.

My final negative thought was that we're all just mixing in religious suffering without knowing how or why.

And so I take up Nyclepi, a concept that has stuck with me for over five years now.  I invented it when I was at my worst suffering.  I felt nyclepi for my peers, professors, and my family.  And it meant to be unimpressed generally; but also to be beyond serendipity in kindness.  For when we are unimpressed with one another and we admit it to ourselves it's not like saying we dislike each other.  It's more like saying we want more for each other.  And that's how I feel about my sister.  And my mom.  And the rest of my family and friends.  And that's why it's a virtue.