Life and the lifestyle... beyond the cliches

When you are young, and you have your entire life in front of you, nothing looks impossible. You stare adversity in the face and view it simply as a challenge to be overcome, as an affront even. You face those challenges head on. You either win, or you learn. You believe you have the intelligence, the drive and the motivation to overcome any challenges or skirt around any obstacles.

As time progresses, life slaps you around a bit. You learn more about adversity. You see more obstacles and you realize that many are difficult to overcome. You are not as optimistic, not as vibrant. Perhaps, not even as confident.

At some point, one realizes just how little one actually controls. You realize how much is out of your hands. The Qu'ran says, "Man plans and Allah plans, and Allah is the best of planners." The Bible says, "it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps." Suffice it to say that no matter how much one prepares, no matter how much one knows, one will always come upon situations and circumstances wherein one is reminded how much is simply out of their hands.

This can be a sobering realization, particularly when it comes to the people that you love and care about. You want to take certain things away from them, to protect them...but you can't/ No matter how hard you try, no matter how much you fight, you have to resign yourself to the fact that there may be little you can do to help them, to ease their pain, to make them whole. This is true no matter how much you believe, no matter what Higher Power you seek, no matter what science you employ.

It is hard no matter how you identify in the lifestyle. It is hard for Masters and Dominants to come to the sobering realization that as much control as they may be able to wield, there is significantly much in life that they have absolutely no control over, no matter how much they may prepare. It is difficult for slaves and submissives, because even the things that in which they excel, and the abilities that they possess and express can sometimes be enough in a given situation, or fate can intervene and affect those very things that make them feel whole in their service and their identities.

In those moments you feel incredibly small... sometimes useless. After all, if you cannot protect the ones you love, what is there? You try to be strong, to provide support, to not let them see you cry... and each moment get harder. You try to distract yourself, but those moment loom large and weigh on you. You try to breathe, to meditate, to delve inside yourself for calm.

But it's hard... it's very hard. It is hard when you realize just how little you are in the grand universe, how little you have control of your life and how little you can do for those you care about. Yet, you try...