Game of Choices

In life you must make lots of choices.
Make lots of little sacrifices and decisions. What you are willing to do without for something or someone. What you are willing to give up, not for the benefit of the self, but rather for the benefit of the other.
Yes, life is about choices.

Often times we make a choice thinking that we might get to have it all, but the fact of the matter is that we don't get to have it all. Sometimes when we make a choice we must deny ourselves certain pleasures and luxuries. When we proclaim certain things sometimes it comes with a sacrifice or a sort of abstinence that we were unaware that would be required. Sometimes our choices come with added requirements and stipulations we knew nothing about. Sometimes we are the illiterate farmer scratching an X on a document.

When I first entered Hellenismos, I wasn't aware of there being so few people. I wasn't aware that overall, we are a pretty damn small community, we are a minority within a minority. Where Kemetics and Heathens seem to be able to band together and have at least one meet-up in a state, Hellenists seem very lucky to have one regular group in a three-state region. When I made the choice to be a Hellenist, I wasn't quite aware that I was also making the choice to feel religiously isolated and alone in my own faith, however untrue my logical brain knows that to be. Now, to a lot of people this doesn't seem so bad. A lot of people seem perfectly capable of managing on their own, I am not a lot of people. I need some regular form of interaction. I would like some knowledge that my faith isn't going to be struggling for survival fifty years from now (because, lets face it, we are.) and it scares me. Yes, I'll admit it, it does scare me quite a bit.

But, I did make a choice, and now knowing full well what lies in wait and what the consequences are, I continue to make a choice. Every single new moon I make the same choice, whether I know it or not. Only in ruminating on choice did I realize this. Every new moon I am making a choice to choose loneliness, and choose uncertainty about the future of my faith. Why? To what end? Most rational people I suppose would simply say that the best option is probably to turn to something else, something that fulfills more of my needs. As I told a friend though, simply put, I can't. It would be like forcing yourself to fall out of love with someone you are madly in love with simply because you saw someone fifteen percent more attractive.

I have these struggles with feeling alone and isolated about every two months I've noticed, and I've realized that is okay. Because each time it does pass. Each time I do get better. It is only in this time that I've realized that I have choice, totally, fully, and completely, and every time I am choosing of my own volition to continue doing what I'm doing. And I take a certain weird kind of pleasure in denying myself.

I feel like I may just have to accept that lack of community may be a part of it for a very long time. The sooner I make peace with that, the happier I will be.

After all, what will happen, will happen.