Good morning from here,
Thanks for your reply, I've been busy with other things for a few days so I'm coming back to what you said today.

... I think a lot about life and often come to the conclusion that a person regrets or misses many things they never did or undertook. While you find your - as you describe - rather conservative form of existence constricting at times, those who maintain or have maintained independence and an unconventional lifestyle are in turn affected by the loss of tradition and embedding in existing structures.

Freedom from conservative or traditional lifestyles can be very beautiful and exciting, but it also has downsides, just like the other way around.

The freedom that someone like myself, for example, has enjoyed in my life resulted in me leaving behind my home and those I grew up with to live life to the fullest. Nevertheless, as I grow older, I realise that people need a base and a home to return to. So one has not nurtured the connections, access to them may no longer exist when one needs them most, such as at birth and death.

The generational contract that exists in traditional communities, where parents take care of the children and the children later take care of the parents, is a form of existence that is increasingly being abandoned in modern societies and I see this as a great loss for the maturing and coming of age of young people.

In Western societies, I think this has to do with the fact that the religious and spiritual superstructure that holds such communities together is falling apart. People want to fill this void, but they do not succeed because they are now and will remain on their own without the stability and embedding in an existing community. In my opinion, this creates a lot of confusion, as well as loneliness.

For my part, I feel that I know both worlds. But already my son did not grow up with the safety of a stable community with all the traditions I myself was part of as a child. The natural identification with celebrating and respecting certain stations in life ends probably with us (father and mother and extended family), it already began ending with me and my siblings as our parents children. Growing up in modern societies gives you a lot of distraction and seemingly endless possibilities to "choose what you want".

For example, such nonsense as being able to choose one's gender and other stupidities. The orientation that religious or spiritual practice gives you is lost and I would therefore ask you and deliberately exaggerate this question: If you were freed from all that you consider rather difficult in your culture and origin, or in other words, if you were completely detached from it, would you not exchange something lesser for now the missing ideal of your religion?

I wonder the ones who do come to meet us in real lives, how many of them are really sincere. Some of them are only a reason of creating pressure on us.

I would say, for example, that those who spread an overzealousness about religious ideals and behave more priestly towards other people, as if they were a priest or an imam, have already lost the spiritual ideal and have already lost what makes people self-confident and capable of living. I assume this and I therefore also observe your and other cultures that are exchanging their spiritual superstructure for Western "freedoms" with concern.

Now, how I see it, there are always people who are not sincere within a community and actually that does not matter as long as there are those who are. When pressure is put onto people it will have the opposite effect than it intended. Sometimes one needs to be pushed though in a gentle and well-meaning way. Religion is blamed for many things but then I would say it's not religious people who are to blame but their anxiety to not "fit in". When people start to focus on what other people might think of them, all spirituality is lost. "Appearance" is exchanged for "being". If you know what I mean :)

I don't disagree that online connections can be gratifying and friendly, also that they can help to find a direction in ones life. I myself were given very fascinating and helpful tips and insights through what I found online with and in others.

I cannot really say why I turn to you once in a while. :) I thank you for your kindness.
God bless you too.