There is an evil in all of us, an insidious absence, a horrible difference. This evil lives within us, it finds shelter in our conceptions of Self. This evil thrives and makes its home in the differences; the differences between what say we do and what we actually do; the difference between what we tell ourselves is Good and what actually feels good to us. ...what we say we are feeling when people ask and what we actually feel when they ask. The difference between the satisfaction we imagine when we pursue our wants and the satisfaction we feel when our wants are satisfied, albeit always briefly. This evil lies in all the subtle lies. In the narratives we use to get through the day. And the reason the evil lives inside of us is because it's the evil that keeps us going. if we were the Good we talk, we'd all kill ourselves for the betterment of others. We'd give and give and give and never take. Starve ourselves in the name of grace. To live is to be selfish, to choose, to act, to assert our relevance in a world where there is none, to insist we be acknowledged, respected, loved. Reality owes us nothing and yet we demand of it, we take from it and what do we give back? Surely it takes something from us in exchange, but what do we give? And when we do give, is it not always out of fear? Not even reverence, but fear. Is our brightest day our first and our darkest day our last? Is it the potential, the chances for positive outcomes, that illuminate our image of the world? What will we do when we know there is nothing better left? If we could free ourselves from anything would this evil not be the first thing to go? if we could give anything in us away, what would we give first? And once freed where would this evil live? if we were to reject the evil inside of us where could it go? What hole could it bore, what place could it make for itself? What if you were but a puppet of this evil? What if in casting it out you fulfilled its desire? What if in letting this evil in you out, you allowed it to expand, to grow, to consume even more? To consume others who never harbored your curse... on the slim chance, with a grain of hope that now with the evil gone, something better will fill in those holes, that something Good will come and fill the absence left by evil. But what if something worse comes instead? What if something more evil than what you rejected takes its place? What if your hope freed you to trade up your evil? What if your hope was justified? What if something better does fill the absences evil left? And what if it really was that evil that drove you? And now that it is gone, so is that much of your life? What if death is the absence of evil? And what difference does that make?