Being a teenage boy is living with the risk of acute embarrassment. But then it gets better – or does it?

This entry is not for children. Well, it may not destroy their innocent minds forever, but I’m not sure. It is about sex, after all.  Well, not how to have sex, more like how to not have sex. You’d think that would be the easiest thing in the world, at least for a man, but the life of numerous congressmen and preachers show us otherwise.

Anyway, for some reason a small number of us choose to not bind ourselves to the powerful instincts that encourage reproduction.  This is no small choice, for remember that we literally are the children of those who did reproduce (which means they had sex, and probably lots of it since it does not make children every time). And the same for their parents again, and their grandparents and so on back to the dawn of time, whether you count Adam or Amoeba as your ancestor. (OK, so amoeba don’t have sex, but your genes would still have around 800 million years of sex before they came to you.)

Apart from us certified weirdos, there is a much much larger number of people who try to not have physically intimate relationships with more than one person, whom they are married to or planning to marry in the near future.  I think that is a little different, but there may be some similarities some of the time, especially since the average man has a stronger sex drive than the average woman up to the age of around 35-40, and again when the woman reaches menopause.

OK, onward to my observations!

The young male body will not take celibacy lying down. It will go into a state of sexual readiness at improper times or even with no encouragement at all, seemingly just on a whim. Given the slightest encouragement, even if only in the mind, it will get overly excited.  At this point, most young men will take the matter in their own hands, as it were, to cause a release of the mating urge without an actual mate.  (This behavior is also seen in some caged animals.)  A few God-fearing souls dare not do this, but eventually their nightly dreams will show them the true power of their instincts in this regard as well.  So one way or another,  a certain balance is struck.

This excessive sensitivity fades gradually as the years pass, but perhaps particularly from around the age of 35 or so.  (I guess this may vary – some people live their lives more slowly than others.) We find that we can hang out with women and not embarrass ourselves no matter what.  No matter where we look, our pulse does not race until we flip that mental switch.  We can look at women to admire them without desiring them. Paradise at last?

But how long was Adam in Paradise.  I suppose that varies from one Adam to another, and specifically I suspect the next change only happens to religious or very nearly religious people.  Basically it is an instance of the understanding that “I am not my body”.  While I have felt on this for a while, I did not get the right words to describe it until I read some of the books by Ryuho Okawa, founder of the “Happy Science” religious movement.  He compares our mind to a compass needle, and mentions various things that can get that compass needle to point in another direction than the way we intended.  So if I say that an attractive woman makes my compass needle move, it is a metaphor, not an euphemism, as it would have been when I was 18.

Another concept that he stresses is the difference between love that gives and “love” that takes.  (Japanese does in fact have two words for love, which I have seen explained like this: “Koi is always wanting, Ai is always giving.” This is again something I noticed several years ago (and which has cropped up in at least one of my unfinished novels):  When I look at someone, do I look with eyes that take or eyes that give?  People can often see this difference, even if we may look the same otherwise.

So this is the meaning of the title.  I think this is a voluntary thing, that most people probably don’t even think about, because they feel hidden in their flesh, much like one would feel hidden in wide, loose-fitting clothes.  As long as other people can’t see anything, we can do what we want.  But the flesh is temporary, but bad habits are forever, I suspect.  So I may not have all the time in the world to recalibrate, not only this sensitivity but many others, like anger and envy. Is it enough that nobody sees it, or that my blood pressure does not go up, or will I continue to judge myself (self-reflection) until the compass needle of my mind points steadily toward my highest aspiration?  Or die trying, most likely.