Selling Out, Cashing In, and Committing

I realized in my late teens that everyone "sells out" to something, and that "selling out," while in some cases means cashing in your dreams for expedient self-gratification, can also just be a pejorative condemnation of committing wholeheartedly to the right cause.

I have realized recently that it takes real courage to commit to the right cause; that while there was surface-level sex appeal to being a rebel and a loner, the truly admirable and aspirational life involves conforming one's behavior to truth, right, justice and honor; that it takes real sacrifice to sacrifice for others; "that true rebellion meant rebelling against vacant rebellion[;]" (Thank you Greg Gutfield; and that the great people of the world are not the lone self-centered wanderers who live "by their own code" (fakespeak for "whatever feels good at the moment"), but the tired, struggling, kind-hearted, gentle-handed husbands and fathers of the world who have given up some of those egotistical dreams and turned their energies to raising up the next generation.

In some ways its easy these days, because I have such a rebellious streak, and now being a good person is essentially a rebellion. Adhering to just and righteous principles is noncomformity. Conservatism and family values are on the fringe, and the despearate cause we all desperately seek so is living the just life with a righteous heart.

So it all comes together in the end.