I have always been too scared to live in the real world.

Too scared.

I've avoided relationships - ties, bonds - all my life. Even with my family. Sometimes I feel I must be the most alienated person on Earth. The perfect spy. The perfect tool. I fancied myself fashioning myself into a steely cool construct of reason.

Except for these troublesome feelings. Which I would like to think I was on the way to grinding to the dust from which it was made (contempt for the Creator), when I was all but exploded and put together all wrong.

After all, what could Humpty Dumpty expect?

Yet I strode up to a new path, a new future that I had always known.

As bits of broken shell whirl down into the sands and we stand upon the dunes, the barren landscape is a call to reality.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, or a happy day wihtout effort. Effort to be happy? Travesty!

Still, it's sad truth. It is not forced. But effort is required to tune out the disharmonies at the interface of our lives. "Do two walk together unless they are agreed to do so?" (Amos 3:3)

Where are we walking? Can we see? Do we want to?

Honesty's painful, sometimes. Still, it's better than deluded bliss.

Is happiness a blessing or reward?