I try to keep an open mind about different lifestyles but I know I'm fairly risk-averse so it can be hard to relate.

It's also more difficult to live that way when others are depending upon you.

Your perception of what qualifies as an open mind is relative. As far as being risk adverse, that indicates a closed mindedness and fear of things outside your comfort zone. You are not nor ever we're "safe", nor can you ever be. Control is an illusion of man when played against the greater backdrop of reality and authority a fickle joke. Culture is not your friend, your choice to play the game of American industrialism and "capitalism version X.Y" is your own by way of you giving others power over you. You are the only true authority in your life, not your parents, not your wife, not your boss, not your friends. Emotion does not translate to text well, I hope you have not taken my words as insult, they were meant to be emotionless but reflective.

Love binds people in ways raw power does not, but its yoke is light.

You’re funny.