SsEeXx

Sex. What comes to mind as you read these three little letters? Images, ideas, emotions, memories, longing, desire? Three little letters, acting as a gateway into a slew of other thoughts, emotions, lessons... sexy, sexual, sexuality. It's quite strange how the arrangement of three letters creates a root word that packs such a punch for the human psyche and furthermore, that the physicality of this one word, idea, act, need (?), causes a ripple throughout our entire way of being and living for as long as, well, since humans have been having sex. I look at the evolution of sex in society, from being openly celebrated in the ancient cities of Greece and Rome, to becoming a topic of the utmost secrecy as religion made its way into the bedroom and deemed this act of procreation a sin, but only if you enjoy it. Fast forward through the years as we find ourselves in this American reemergence of open sexuality that has been unfolding since the early 1900s, from flapper women showing a little more skin and chopping their hair off in the 1920s, to the bikini making its way to beaches in the 1940s, and to the Free Love Movement of the 1960s, wherein, bras became the unpopular fashion, multiple sexual partners became the norm, contraception hit the shelves, women and the LGBT community stood up and stood out in a demand for sexual and societal equality. To say the least, it rocked the post WWII "American Dream" world we had been living in, but in the shock of all this perceived change to the sanctity of our American society, we began a whole new chapter into our sexual evolution as humans. Some of us began asking the question, what's the big deal? The hype, the taboo, the drive? We began acting in search of the answer to this question, some of us with extreme exploration into our own sexuality, some of us with the elimination of the very thing we felt held power over us, some of us chose to capitalize on this primal desire. The number of paths that made themselves available to each of our individual journeys increased tenfold, at least in a public sense, as sex became mainstream. What I see today is a confliction of the masses. Sometimes I forget how many people are still so driven by their animalistic desires in conquering and procreating, by finding fulfillment in the ownership of another's body based simply off of physical attraction or socially imposed ideals that this is what power is; having sex, being sexual, looking sexy. Mindlessly allowing yourself to be baited by the allure, the ultimate mystery of sex itself. After all, we all know the saying, "Sex Sells", and how untrue does it prove to be? Is it that we recognize what it is we are being force fed on so many different levels, but we go along with it because, well, that's just how it is or are we truly unaware of the masters pulling our sex strings, selling us things because a sexy woman in a bikini told us to? I haven't quite made up my mind, something tells me it is somewhere in the middle though. When taking into consideration the range of advancement from person to person, years of life under each souls' belt, I begin to recognize that the individual truly does have the power to see past all the bullshit and perhaps it's just a matter of time for the collective to catch up and say "enough is enough, we cannot be bought and sold by our reproductive organs and manipulated by the desires of our primal instincts." Perhaps it is just a matter of time before we stop placing so much emphasis and curiosity on who's having sex with who and just relish in the enjoyment of our own sexual nature, without an overhanging pressure of what that is supposed to be, without the comparison to what "everyone else is doing", with a pride in the emotionality and potential of true human connection that is offered by something as powerful as sex. I guess maybe I am just daydreaming here, romanticizing, continuously idealizing a world where people decide to connect with themselves in the most intimate levels and in the most vulnerable of ways, where the ego driven facade finally exhausts itself and we go back to simply being human... maybe even more than human.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that the sexual climate of our world today is where it needs to be in conjunction with the progress we are all setting out to make within and without ourselves, even if those lessons in progression have not yet become self evident. For every troubling circumstance I wish I could simply wish away, I allow myself a moment to take note of the divine coordinance of it all, to shift my perspective outside of viewing it as a problem and to see the custom designed challenges that lay ahead of each individual, the growth spurt at the end of each stage of life, the damn light at the end of the tunnel. And from doing so, I find a sense of peace, in the middle of what feels like an absolute downward spiral, a multifaceted eruption of chaos, I find my place of acceptance and peace within it all. Recognizing that the trials of being human, on this very day, in this current space I occupy has been and continues to provide me with every single tool I need to keep moving forward, of course I can only speak from the experiences I have been allotted, but I am hoping that it is enough to share what I have learned and observed so far, and to be heard for all that I have to offer, regardless of what kind of sex I'm having.

July 2018