a meaningful life
SEX
Because even while trying to be a good person, you remain a person, with all the burdens that come with being ALIVE.
Mon.mar.24th.2024 - Ubochi Afor
One of the reasons I write 5 distinct articles is because I recognize that my people are all at different stages in life. As such an article from a political, historical or religious angle, even when on the same topic, resonates differently based on ones state and status in life at a given time.
I had previously done an article on Sex under the Arrow of God but that covers the spiritual nuances of sex as communion and while it reflects my own personal positions more closely, it may not help any of our youth who are less attached to the "God" in sex and are just struggling with the daily adaptation to an ever growing urge for something their body craves, which their mind debates, their spirit interrupts and the entire world seems to be entirely contradictory on.
For those who are interested in A Meaningful Life, here is my more practical take on Sex. I recommend the Arrow of God approach if you are brave but either way, start here because the only thing simple about Sex is that it is just a 3 letter word whether in English or Igbo. Past that it is a little demon you must tame and an angel to cradle on the journey to A Meaningful Life.
a confusing combination if I may add.
It is important to note that articles in the "A Meaningful Life" series are not written from a Spiritual perspective in as much as they seek an end that is good. As such this article cannot be reflective of what I would consider the best path if spiritual and esoteric considerations were to be added. They are however my most honest and unflinching advice for those who are after a practical evaluation of Sex, just in relation to its role in living A Meaningful Life.
In summary sex is a detoxifying, "toxifier", a fulfilling, sap, a complex meal that when a balanced diet builds but if consumed out of sequence can more easily derail A Meaningful Life than any other activity known to man.
Here is a short and salient introduction, in practical logic, debatable on facts only. It is focused on the implications, uses and essentiality of sex to and in A Meaningful Life.
However, if you seek my advice, I insist that this should be read in tandem with my article on Sex under the Arrow of God Series, if it is to make sense beyond the practical reality and allow you cognizance of the other realities that plague sex and Sexuality and to make this a balanced diet.
Furthermore and due to the seriousness of the topic, I will write every article this week on Sex, allowing you a view from the Business Driven by Need, The Arrow of God and The Raw Naked Truth perspectives.
SEX TRADE
The journey to A Meaningful Life is wrought with economic needs and often the fastest route is a physical exchange of pleasure for another in exchange for access to the resources or opportunities they control.
For women this often comes in the requests from men for sexual favours, relationships with sexual implications and just plain and crude advances or abuse in exchange for access to opportunities.
In each instance, the reaction should be commensurate to the weight of opportunity, the extent and balance of the exchange, the intention of the purveyor and the forward implications to health, state of mind and purpose, ensuring that sex when traded, does not sell off your access to A Meaningful Life.
Note that I am neither encouraging nor discouraging. I am proposing that you take the decision, having fully weighted of its costs, especially the costs that come well beyond the immediate exchange that is presented.
For men, the advance isn't always direct, but the frequency remains the same. A bosses daughter, A much older boss, A successful woman. In most instances it isn't even the woman making the advance, albeit that the sexual favours acrue to her, since in this instance the man's desires are not based on sexual desire but economic gain.
The man who trades sexual relations and the fraudulent relationships that come with it, must also consider the costs well beyond they donation of protein shakes, these costs will include the lost opportunities for meaningful relations, the propensity to degenerate to fraud in lifestyle, the risks to personal ego when achievements are not evidence of prowess but rather bought with waist movements or a promise of love that just isn't there and worst the lost capacity that comes from forgetting how to do the actual things that were to be learned on the alternative routes of achievement.
Is it then possible to live A Meaningful Life and still trade sex, yes but it isn't a door you should walk into blindly.
Like all other trades there are times when sexual relations as a means of exchange does not deviate from your course to A Meaningful Life but rather paves the way but it isn't something you should judge without extreme care.
It is important to understand that A Meaningful Life is not lived in the sky but with people, as such you must learn to use, be useful and to cooperate when your interests are also protected. You must avoid being abused, abusing and engaging in trades with only trade offs and no upside for you or with diminishing returns that will bring regret down the line.
This is not the moral answer, but it is a logically sound modality that can enable your journey to A Meaningful Life if used carefully. The Meaningful Life yields to good but this is not always a Spiritual question, it often can be logical and that is where this article limits its discussions.
A secret agent who can not follow through on sexual responsibilities to the criminal at the other end of a spying relationship is not fit for the job. A secretary who cannot consummate a union where the boss, represents critical interest and therefore requires sexual insulation and the trust that only intimacy can sustain is in the wrong job.
In instance after instance, conscious prostitution and Non-Marital sexual interactions find permission in the propriety of the ends, this judged on the absence of alternative routes, the personal comfort with the exchange and the assurance that the sex route is the "main" road to something else or something more, that is part of and/or on the pathway to, A Meaningful Life.
REPRODUCTION
For all its uses and purposes, procreation is the most important use of sex.
A Meaningful Life, is not possible if in reproducing you pair with the wrong persons, couple at the wrong times and consequently birth the wrong seeds.
For the most part this is a very spiritual decision and more suitable to my Arrow of God Article on Sex. However, and recognizing that not all people subscribe to a spiritual submission of their actions I am going to try hard to physically explain, in mental logic, that which is in the best instances a spiritual decision.
On the route to A Meaningful Life, the sojourner must recognize the material realities of procreation. It is crucial to put in context the raw fact that no matter how you "feel" now, in the future you will want children, as such it is important to understand the debilitating and enabling factors and key them into a conscious selection of sex partners and timelines in direct correlation to your desire for A Meaningful Life.
For women it is very important to note the facts on your productive timeline, a window most potent from 16-35 years of age. Factor this into the quantity of children you want to have and understand that you can study while pregnant but you cannot fast-ward pregnancy, inorder to achieve 5 children between the age of 30-35.
For men it is important to understand the energy it takes to throw children up in the air and in so doing set the quantity and timelines that enables you to be a "good" father in all the none-monetary, masculine contributions to the life of a child.
In coupling these and other analysis, you will be pused to consciously calculate hereditary compatibility, lifestyle compatibility, character, economics, skill balance and fit, to ensure that the persons you choose to procreate with do not become stampedes to your dreams, even by a simple dragging of feet.
For example, when your desire is to live in Lagos and yet you have rampant sex on an American business trip, you must go, they most come or your children will end up with "half chop", regardless of which parent they end up with.
While many people continue to achieve with broken homes and intercontinental relationships, it cannot be anything other than a distraction to add disjointed relations to your quest for A Meaningful Life.
Furthermore, many may speak of condoms and contraceptives. In the case of condoms, that isn't sex, but rather "human assisted masturbation", which may still lead to accidental sex and procreation. In the case of contraceptives, note that human bodies adjust and learn and if you encourage your body to wait, it may still be waiting when you start to beg it to create. Both instances are not representative of what I mean by sex, although planning is a key component of logical actions on the road to A Meaningful Life and these are the only options, here and there. I will not add anything on the Morality.
No matter your religion, career path, Preparation or lifestyle, have sex with compatibility in mind - just in case.
In the modern world of contraceptives, this my "village" advice might look old but you must consider that even with spoons, you are what you eat.
Sex is food, heart food, body food, mind food, spirit food, a God's diet... Precisely why I continue to advice that you read on it from the Arrow of God perspective also.
As food, it builds, weakens, heals, injures and the modern randomness with which we engage in it negates purpose and as it leads to reproduction will lead you down the road of random freedoms that diminish your ability to take focused decisions on who, what, when, how and why.
PLEASURE
"The thing dey sweeeeet". (Smiles).
A Meaningful Life, is not a life of pain, it isn't suffering, it isn't loss.
It is however a life of purpose and purpose cannot be random.
As such even when seeking the pleasures of sex you must factor the secondary implications of the partners, reasons and ends of your sexual activities.
For A Meaningful Life, sex must have an objective. It must have a strategy, it must fit a need and not just be a random search for pleasure.
This doesn't affect its pleasure value. In fact, the very fact of the ends to which a sexual relationship is destined amplifies its value and makes the exchange ever more pleasurable, a pleasure founded in both the act, its reward and the safety of its ends which makes it end without regret.
For example, when sex is had with a co-worker, employee, employer, customer or contractor with the precise aim of securing a temporary win, wherefore the other party is actually interested in more but fooled, it makes you a fraud and the leach. You win but am not sure that you want to be a fraud and that is precisely what this means.
However, when the same sex is had, by mutually consenting persons and it leads to the same end, built on the bond of trust generated or enforced in the sexual exchange. The same ends are achieved without fraud and the pleasure enhanced.
Again if this same exchange happens out of desperation and you are on the other end of the exchange, used and abused there will be no pleasure even when the physical act is so sweet, because in the end, you will be filled with regret and loathing.
Furthermore, no matter your holiness, sex is a pleasurable act. It is a craft that has art and style and I recommend that you learn its nuances, positions, tricks and flows, not matter the nature of the relationships in which you have them. You should also be mindful not to adobt the more criminal nature and abhorent traditions of modern human sexuality.
Many might wonder why I have not mentioned marriage in this article.
This is because, while I am a proponent of marriage, we are not talking about the morality of sex in this article but rather the practical realities and their implications for A Meaningful Life - your Meaningful life.
COMPETITION
In the office, among peers, in a quest for political position, in many other parts of life, sex, sexuality and its nuance components form basis and tools of competition and the Meaningful Life must be careful not to lose at the sake of foolish modesty and in winning, not to win an empty can.
Let me start by explaining what is means to win an empty can.
A while ago, I got into a fight with my inlaws and it went beyond the fray and I warned them "not to win an empty can".
Sexual competition is a race to the bottom but sex in competiton is not always a bad idea.
It becomes very difficult to keep a high value man if you are not feeding him, equally same to keep a goddess and leave her wanting. In these cases, sexual competition requires that you engage in serious investments in sexual capacity and to protect your territory with the right dose of sexual knowledge and availability.
In work and play, as well as in the formal settings of relationships and matrimony, sexual competition is allowed to maintain, gain and protect territory but this must not be fraud, envy or selfish, it must be guided by a higher goal and must be directly proportionate to its role in your quest for A Meaningful Life.
This is hard to measure as such let me suggest 3 standards. 1. It must be guided by good intentions, 2. It must be reciprocal and 3. It must have direct correlation to your quest for A Meaningful Life.
Sexual competition for mere competition sake or just to win to spite someone will always lead to degeneracy, the pleasures of sex and the ease of the win being too hard to resist once it becomes a standard and the damage being to hard to limit once you learn to win by fucking up.
A Meaningful Life, is a disciplined art and sex while suitable to make, sustain and defend gains cannot be merely a means to an end and a tool to win.
used in this way it breaks form, damages skill and destroys creativity such that where it overpowers, discipline dies and A Meaningful Life is not loose. It needs tight nuts to seal a win.
STATUS
Our modern culture has made sex a status symbol. Promiscuity in some instances, innocence in orders.
Where sex becomes a means or basis of your appraisal of yourself, you have lost the plot.
May fall into the trap of unholy, holiness, whereby they qualify themselves as good on the basis of abstinence.
Being clean is as much about what you put out as it is in what you take in.
To find status in sexual prowess, seduction or promiscuity is no less damning than to find it in rude, selfish or uncultured innocence, virginity and self serving, self preservation.
A Meaningful Life must be defined by meaning and the Status of those who subscribe to it must enable and disable sexuality in line with meaning and not perception.
Your choice to do or not, who or not, when or not, how or not should have direct correlation to your path and walk to A Meaningful Life.
Your status all the same, should find itself in that walk and not be defined by any level of pretense and shocking as it may be, the most frequented place for pretence is human sexuality.
May crave but do not display and then point accusatory fingers at those with even minor cravings who dare to own up to their desires.
Furthermore, in negating the status factor of sex and focusing on the meaning implications, much of the conformity to absurdities become unnecessary.
For example, as a man, I grew up under pressure to boast about a high body count. It formed part of the perceptions of masculinity and high value. At late and in the absence of any concern for human valuations of my sexual activities I can not venture for volumes or be content with a false minimum, all my actions are therefore based on actual need and not arbitrary standards in a quest for status.
The volume of wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, lovers or even non, should be in direct correlation to your quest for A Meaningful Life. Adding all those who are essential and rejecting all who are not. In all ensuring that the decision is yours and that it makes sense when you look at the full picture of the life you envision and not a portion thereoff.
Oddly enough a high risk exists where one values the status of abstinence such that they miss the best mates and companions who are not yet ready for the sacrifice of celibacy.
It is important to note, aside any moral questions, that you will meet the right people at the "wrong" time and it may require that you "screw" with your schedule and screw them, to keep them and walk down to a more suitable point for mutual understanding. People do not come ready made but this those not also mean that you should wear unfinished clothes. Finding the balance is the challenge.
This is hard for me to write, because I try to keep to a much higher and more perfect standard but unfortunately that standard is more esotheric and spiritual and cannot be explained in facts but I will inject it here in summary.
Fuck what you have been told, the world does not work out, you work it out.
In essence and as it relates to sex and status, where abstinence is cool but your inner being demands in an instance or another that you break it, use a sledgehammer and where promiscuity is the norm and you meet a reason to hold off, chain yourself.
The simple common denominator on what to do should not be group think but your own analysis of what is best for you, on a road to A Meaningful Life and this is hard to know, if all you have to trust is your eyes. For me I let my spirit lead on this because for the most part when it is your mind, its focus in public is on status and in the dark, this may unlock demonic devices that strike with extreme contradictions, introducing emotional imbalances and derailing A Meaningful Life.
COMFORT/ENERGY
Sex is essential for rest and energy and even creativity.
For years I searched for data on the implications of Masturbation. Aside moral and religious thoughts I found it hard to see solutions based on practical and factual logic that would stimulate the adequate faith in approach that is often required to sustain abstinence from any addictive and pleasurable act.
Here is the answer. Sex in all forms induces comfort or discomfort, increases energy or saps energy, all quite in relation to volume, nature and consequence.
Seek sexual experiences that are rewarding and in moderate volume and they will fill you with the energy to fight for your Visions. However, engage is wanton sexcapades, frequent Masturbation and other volume excessive or form embarrassing/deprecating sexual activities and watch your energy dissipate and your general mental state depress.
One of my issues with modern Monogamy is that modern men now engage in more unwholesome sexual activities because even when they sustain the semblance of piety with genuine monogamous sex, their amorous selves still wrestling them in with weaknesses to the other sex that de-energize.
For women in a sex crazed society a funny opposite might exist, wherefore a woman who would have otherwise been satisfied to live here life with one partner, now feels cheated by the notion of fidelity, through no natural impulse, just observed modern criticisms of social hierarchy that leave her unsettled in that which is most natural to her, keeps her desiring the abnormal and ensure that she is drained by the confusion if she resists or the unsatisfying dissatisfaction, if she complies.
Sex seems to be a lubricating element of the human experience, as such to subtract it from A Meaningful Life may be akin to driving a car for a lifetime, on a single oil change. It may very well be possible to survive the journey but it very much will end in drudgery. It is however equally clear, that changing the oil everyday, is a wasteful contribution of plastic cans to the trash and even when there are no visible consequences in procreation or alienation, the nuts on the engine may very well wear out and equally where will their be time left for driving down the road to A Meaningful Life.
That which can pacify and edify cannot be so used to occupy, neither your mind, nor your time, nor your Visions for A Meaningful Life.
THE RESULTS
In as much as this article is not aiming to give a take on sex from a moral angle, A Meaningful Life Must be a good life and I cannot see what is good in being bad.
The end game of sexual activity for the person who seeks A Meaningful Life must be good. This end must be defined in the foundations of the act and is the basis for the rules of play.
For example, if your desire is to play the field, pick on opponents. That is to say that you should not play with the bodies of those who crave love, nor can it be justified to take undue advantages of age, wealth or inebriation.
Of course this limits your options, however, A Meaningful Life requires discipline and if you must win all the time, you are already off course.
Part of A Meaningful Life is in the contributions you make to the lives of people and therefore in the lack of damage. This should be the standards to weight your decisions.
if the ends gift, great, in the least they must not take.
What would be the Meaning in that?
AML - SERIES PROFILE
A MEANINGFUL LIFE
the "A MEANINGFUL LIFE" series is a non Religious, Non Enterprise look at life and meaning, written with the hope of getting you to a life of pure Joy, real Happiness and Satisfaction with your own life, regardless of your faith and economic profile.
It does not intend to preach, but where necessary it will. At the end, the desired result is that from this series you will pick up the tools to give your life greater meaning, and live a more satisfying existence.
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