It is not the hawk or the dove that is the danger, not the bleeding heart or the firebrand. These at the least have conviction; these take action, they believe, they think. The danger is the parrot, the follower of whatever creed or patterns they either grew up in or else ought to believe in order to make themselves most secure. These come home from their work, which is not soulless except that they make it so by their own soullessness; they turn on the tv to whatever news or entertainment matches their needs for comfort because they need the noise to drown out whatever glimmer of independent thought or belief might otherwise bubble up to the surface of their consciousness and force them to act or to think.

letting go and more letting go, then deciding if what's been let go ought to have been held on to. but what is there to decide? this deciding is another holding on, another not letting go, in this case to a shadow, not to the thing but to the longing for the thing, a shadow of a shadow, holding on to a longing, not letting go of a longing. but the thing let go was no more real, no more substantial than the shadow itself. it was the longing, not the thing, always, that you were holding onto.