Green Oasis

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law…
Love is the law, love under will
(The Book of the Law 1:40, 57)

I have been doing what was expected of me for most of my life. I was living my life according to the desires of others. Who I was and what I wanted was sacrificed in the quest to become like God. My law was God’s law as it had been taught to me.

I jettisoned that law when I realized that God was a fiction. I discovered that God was only the collective desires of humanity which had changed through the ages as humanity changed. My switch from believing Mormon to strongly atheistic agnostic was the first act of real consequence that I made contrary to expectations. I was doing what I wanted despite others’ desires. My repudiation of God was also a repudiation of the expectations that had been placed on me. The heady power and freedom of that act felt really good. It must be something like the feeling of getting up from your sick bed after months of confinement.

I no longer recognize anyone’s authority to tell me what is morally right and wrong. They have no more standing to pontificate on morality than I do because they don’t have an ersatz God to back them up. There is no absolute standard for behavior. I decide what I will do because I want to do it.

That may sound like a prescription for licentious behavior, especially to those who have listened to too many Sunday School lessons telling them how evil we would be without God. One may imagine that I hope for a life full of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Life’s short. Live hard. Die young.

But that’s not what I want. I want to live happily, faithfully with my wife. I want to experience life’s adventures with her. I want to walk alongside my children as they experience the wonderful world that they’re so extraordinarily privileged to be a part of. I want to see who they were born to be unfold. I want to learn everything I can in life’s short day. I want to regain my sense of wonder and see the world with new eyes. I want to help others. I want to make a difference to someone. I want someone to miss me when I’m gone.

I will do what I want, and to hell with anyone who gets in my way.