"This is the source of Callahan's Law (also known as the Law of Conservation of Pain and Joy): 'Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased—thus do we refute entropy.'     Stated another way: 'Just as there are Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed. But one can be converted into the other.'" 

--Spider Robinson, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon et seq.

I have quoted Callahan's Law more than any other piece of wisdom. It struck me dumb the other day that I have almost never written the full law, nor have I ever ruminated on the reason for the law -- the refutation of entropy. 

This is odd because it's another of those maxims that impels how my life is structured. I have a T-shirt emblazoned with the full law, and they are probably the only words I would ever choose to tattoo on myself (though I have no plans to). I can state with some finality that they are the most important words I ever ran across not uttered by someone who loves me.

Entropy. I've seen it expressed as "nature's tax". Left unchecked, everything degrades over time. Often faster, the more time goes on. This is true of things. It is true of people. It is true of the people and things which together we call "civilizations". 

I don't feel as if you need a heads-up on the entropy unfolding all around us. We have created vast systems, at times piggybacking on the natural systems we found, at times in opposition to them. We layered stratum after stratum of complexity on to those systems, while breeding like rabbits ourselves. Then we handed control of the systems to avaricious, amoral and antihuman devils.

What could go wrong? What could possibly go wrong?

There is so much suffering in the world and each and every day I must psychically gird myself against its pounding punching insistence. Sometimes it's too much. Some days, the suffering is so great, so monstrous, that it overloads me and against every instinct I contribute to it. I vacillate between hating the world for its flat refusal to even engage with my ideals and hating myself for clearly not belonging on this planet. That's on my bad days.

On my good days...

I didn't get the concept of soul forests from Spider. I came to that phrase all by myself, which in absolutely no way suggests it's original to me. But Callahan's Law compels me to live the way I do. Mark came here in 2016 and sharing our lives has lessened his Pain and ours, and brought us all augmented joy. The same is true of everyone in my soul forest. I hear you, I feel you, and I've got you to whatever extent you wish. 

Are you struggling financially? So are we sometimes. There's no shame in it, or at least there wouldn't be in a sane society, so let go of the pain of shame. We don't have much, but we'll share what we have. We'll do that because it's the sharing that refutes entropy.

Wanna be rich? You almost certainly are already. Give something to somebody. Friend or stranger, it doesn't matter, but give it freely and don't expect anything back. Then look at what you just did. You are so rich that you can afford to just GIVE something away. Elon Musk doesn't do that. By every measure that matters (to me, if not to Musk), you are richer than the richest person on the globe if you give something away without condition.

There is no functional limit to what we will share to people close enough to us, assuming of course (and of course we would never assume) that they want to share too. Share enough long enough and love might grow: that's the joy most worth sharing....not to mention the only surefire way to convert pain into joy.

The more widely you share, the more you acknowledge and celebrate we are all interconnected. The more widely you share, the more likely you'll find the person best able to lessen your pain (and of course different pains are best lessened by different people.)

What we are engaged in is the organic building of a clan -- a clan that isn't family, but which has (some/many/most) of the characteristics of a family. Who knows how many properties it encompasses over how many different places. We're starting with two, the house here and the farm north of Belleville. I'd love nothing better for this idea to catch on, either with us or with others of your choosing. It takes three incomes to do the work one used to anyway.

How to put this gently.

I wrote a great many blogs about polyamory, starting in 2014 when I deemed myself emotionally ready to embark on the path my mind set for me at birth, if not before. I initially said I wouldn't evangelize, and then wouldn't shut up about polyamory for about six years.

I stand by everything I have written...but if I had the chance to write it all over again, THIS blog is the one I'd open (haha) with.

I said, back in that first blog, that it's not about the sex and it's not about the sects. I learned over the ensuing period -- it took me far too long -- that I'd let my ideals trump my reals again: for many if not most polyamorous people, it is about the sex no matter how much they protest otherwise. 

I'm not like that. Sex is lovely, sex is the best way I know to truly connect to another human being. But it is, and always has been, a culmination of closeness, and not something I share easily. That is much, much more of an understatement than nearly every person on earth knows about me. It also happens to be true.

It's something I am open to sharing if love grows to permit it. It's NOT something I look for out of any gate, or even in the first ten laps of the race, and everyone who knows me knows that.

Nor do I consider my soul forest to be any sort of cult. I attach no religious significance to the concept of soul forests; I don't consider myself the authority of mine or anyone else's; most notably I encourage everyone in my forest to find theirs, if they care to.

So it's not sex and it's not sects. It's simply...sharing. Lessening pain, and increasing joy.

Refuting entropy.