The unmoored young man can disappear for days or weeks at a time and move as it suits him. He can throw himself into barroom brawls or start them, testing his knuckles and chin. He can grow a wild beard or shave his head, waste time on pet causes, sample one too many whiskies, and risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss.

He can take such risks and liberties because no one and nothing really depend on him.

While his lifestyle has been greatly romanticized and is in many ways now incentivized, the Western ronin likely has no idea that true adventure begins when man sets anchor in truth and love — when he commits to God, to a woman, to children, and to a place.

When roaming, it's easy to intellectualize about starting a family but impossible to understand that when committing to a person for life and then together bringing little people into the world or adopting, your surface area as a human will vastly increase, exposing you both to multiplied risk, reward, suffering and joy. The corresponding responsibility is spiritually enriching. Nothing else compares.

This Thanksgiving, I thank God for the adventure of a lifetime; for the wonderful responsibility to and temporary guardianship over immortal souls; and for the worthwhile challenge of standing my ground by my wife's side until death do us part.

I pray that those solipsistic youth now adrift may similarly come to know such blessings.

The trouble is, however, that there are forces at work trying to preclude a great many from embracing them.

Gender ideologues, pharmacists, and surgeons have set about the sterilization and mutilation of children across the country, all but guaranteeing that the victims will spend their lives roaming. De-populationists and other anti-natalists have fed young people propaganda, promoting a culture of death and dissuading them from starting families. Kept in business by a eudaemonistic culture that promotes freedom from responsibility, abortionists, such as those who helped enrich the woman President Joe Biden recently awarded the presidential medal of freedom, have slain tens of millions of babies who could have loved, been loved, and starred in countless adventures.

When asked whether the attack on the family is a coordinated effort or just a confluence of dark forces that look like they're working in concert, Dale Ahlquist, the president and co-founder of the Society of G.K. Chesterton, told Blaze News earlier this year, "Well, let's go back to the Holy Family."

"How did the [Holy Family] begin? With Satan trying to kill it, all right. Herod sends his soldiers to kill all the babies in Bethlehem. So here are the forces of evil at work, first on the Holy Family and then on the rise of the normal family. It is an evil act," said Ahlquist.

It should surprise no one that the institution that evil appears most keen to destroy is that most worth pursuing, building, and protecting.

I pray that our readers enjoy great success in their respective adventures and that their anchors hold.

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