The Opposite Of Charity Is Justice

I am nearing finality with my indepth reevaluations into the fundamentals of Objectivism, and felt like recording some thoughts here.
I first read Atlas Shrugged in the summer of 2000, while living in Mystic, Connecticut. I was sharing a place for the season with an old lesbian drinking buddy of mine, working at a hotel and with all the world of time seemingly before me. I had known that the work meant a great deal to my father, and as I was in those days digesting philosophical texts like flowing water it only seemed right to dive into Ayn Rand's seminal book. I recall at the time seeing many commonalities in the ideas expressed and the decisions I had myself made in the years previous. I never allowed myself to go beyond the point of questioning, though, as to whether the similarities were somehow instilled in me by my old man, or whether they were the natural results of my own ongoing psychogenesis. I never pursued that line of thought, as those were in fact the months leading up to the murder of my sister Rebecca.
In the months that followed that tribulation, I threw myself steadfastly into Objectivism, to militant levels. The tenets, the ideology, were the flint that made me sharper than what I was, providing a focal point. In that direction, the combination of the increasing degrees of grief with the blossoming personal belief system left me entirely unwilling and unable to work many of the occupations then open to me. That Fall and Winter I had worked for the Salvation Army of Worcester, Massachusetts, disagreeing with the theology of the organization but appreciating its politics. On the side I modeled for a variety of life-drawing groups and art courses, as it was during this period when I also began marrying Tai Chi with isometrics. I was in the greatest shape of my life, physically and mentally. Emotionally, even spiritually, was another matter altogether, obviously.
At the start of 2001 I was living and working in Boston, Massachusetts, heavily involved with the community union known as the Acorn program. A select group of my coworkers there and I would gather, after work, at assorted bars around the neighborhoods of Dorchester and Chelsea, where we would engage in long-winded debates concerning economics, sociology, and philosophy. None of us agreed with the program of our employment, but each of us saw it as a stepping stone in our prospective individual paths of social and political development. My own views at this time were an increasingly clusterfuck of a mix of Discordianism and Objectivism. There were no shades of gray in my outlook, for good or ill. The bloodthirst for a changed world was something we all shared, which ended as a rather volatile mix itself.
Long story short, members of that particular circle were being plagued by a serial rapist, and other members chose to take matters into their own hands, in the most illegal of ways conceivable. I was not directly involved in any of the ordeal, though I was directly involved in the cleanup. Events that to this day weigh in on my thoughts from time to time, to the point of harrowingly vivid nightmares. Make of this what you will.
Shortly thereafter, the overburdening weight of life and death proved too much for my own shoulders to carry, and I experienced a severe psychological collapse, physically destroying many of my personal belongings and then relocating back to Kentucky to be nearer to what family remained.
Ten years of a prolonged paradigm shift ensued, and along the way I have since incorporated the philosophy of Absurdism into my own belief system.
Wondering how specifically Objectivism still fits into my inner dialogue, as well as realizing just how entrenched was and is the great Steve Ditko (one of my artistic heroes) into the teachings of Ayn Rand, I decided to study the works once more. The Fountainhead mesmerized me, keeping me up late every night as I absorbed it completely. And now, as the end pages of Atlas Shrugged draw near, I encounter this passage:

"He felt a peculiar cleanliness. It was made of pride and of love for this earth, this earth which was his, not theirs. It was the feeling which had moved him through his life, the feeling which some among men know in their youth, then betray, but which he had never betrayed and had carried within him as a battered, attacked, unidentified, but living motor- the feeling which he could now experience in its full, uncontested purity: the sense of his own superlative value and the superlative value of his life. It was the final certainty that his life was his, to be lived with no bondage to evil, and that that bondage had never been necessary. It was the radiant serenity of knowing that he was free of fear, of pain, of guilt."

And for the first time in years, I really teared up. This is my life. Imagination, Intelligence, Individuality, Initiative, and Ingenuity, all employed for the excellence of self and of the world around me, no matter the sacrifices along the way. No matter what destruction comes of it. This is my life, I live it for myself and by my standards alone, and I always have. Especially whenever I am so unfortunate as to reap what I sow.