The way I'm saying it now is that I've made the decision to enter the monastery and become a monk. Now it's a matter of the causes and conditions manifesting and presenting themselves to make it an actuality. I leave it to fate. I won't do anything affirmative to make it happen, that has never been my style. Nothing has happened in my life as a result of me making it happen. Hm, that came out wrong.

Being bounced around like a pinball is more my style, and I see no reason to stray from my lifelong patterns. For what I'm doing in life – my search for meaning and living true to myself – monastery is the only (living) choice here. It's so clear. I just seem to have trouble getting that through my thick head. So come on, world, sock it to me.

A lot has already happened without my instigation to push me affirmatively to becoming a monk. Little things the monastics have done to make me feel included and at home and part of the community. Things like putting me into the daily work rotation without any fanfare, and giving me a couple of sets of monastic clothes to wear in order to fit in and be comfortable.

On the home front, I haven't mentioned anything to the parents yet. They didn't ask what my plans were or when I was flying back. We did have an in-depth conversation, or as in-depth as we could possibly have, though. I got them pretty darn close to outright saying that money is more important than family.

I got them there in a roundabout fashion, talking about my brother raising his baby, about them and how they raised us, about their relationship with my grandparents, about my mother's relationship with her younger brother who lives just an hour away from them in New Jersey, and with all of the answers, it was innocuous and natural when I asked, "So is money more important than family?". "In some ways," was the answer.

Well, OK then.

Your parents die, but that's OK because you still have the money you made while not spending more time with them. You don't visit your younger brother more often, even though you realize neither of you will be around forever, because you're too busy making money, and so is he (or so you say). And when either dies, the money is still there. Your son commits suicide, and that's OK because you still have money.

Then you die, and it doesn't matter that all you lived for was money; sacrificing family, relations, and meaning in the process, and it doesn't matter that you can't take the money with you – because you're dead. To your dying day, you lived with the security that you always had money in the bank in case of that emergency.

I'm telling you, they are Zen Materialists.