A viewer requests that I discuss why Lent is important.
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He's done some excellent requested videos in the past.
But this wasn't a requested video.
It was a donation with a request attached to it.
Asking me to talk about Lent.
And really, it's probably something I should be doing anyway, isn't it?
Now, Lent.
I'm sure you guys are familiar with it.
It's the time of the year that Catholics, they pick something that they habitually do to give that up for six weeks, to do a little bit of self-imposed suffering.
Now, I'm not going to get into the history of it or the why of it.
Partly because that's what your catechism is for.
Just go read that.
And second, if I tried to talk about it, I'm quite certain I would get something wrong and look like an absolute fool and you might figure out what a bad Catholic I actually am.
So I'm not going to be talking about those issues.
What I want to talk about is the psychology of it.
Why it's so useful.
Why it's such a good thing to do.
And why it's a ritual that even if you're a non-Catholic, atheist, Hindu, you might want to consider adopting.
And for the record, I'm sure Hindus do actually have something a lot like this.
Most human cultures have.
Most human cultures have had this forced upon them just by nature, if nothing else.
And it's something we really miss in our present day lives by not having, by not giving something up.
We have a little bit too much luxury nowadays.
Now, it doesn't have to be something big.
My brother-in-law gave up drinking for Lent.
And upon being informed that Lent wasn't five weeks, it was six weeks, he reacted with great emotional distress.
Maybe I'll give up drinking one time for Lent and really focus on an exercise program or something, because I'll be going nuts with excess energy.
But it doesn't have to be something big.
It can just be a small luxury.
And I think starting off with a small luxury is actually the better maneuver.
Give up carbonated soda.
Give up, like I did last year, video games.
Because it's interesting to find out just how addicted you are.
See, we keep most of our addictions in check.
Right?
And there's a satiating point.
The reason that drug addictions are so heavily criticized is, you know, like blow.
When you're doing blow, all you want to do is even more blow.
And so you can burn through your entire bank account in one evening.
And drugs in general, particularly the ones that are currently deemed illegal, tend to have very, very destructive cycles.
And they all have cycles.
That's the thing.
Serial killers have cycles.
When the FBI is tracking a serial killer, there's going to be a cyclic pattern to what they're doing.
You know, they only kill every five weeks or eight weeks or what have you.
There's a predictable pattern to the rate of killings.
And so, with myself, let's take video games.
I don't generally play that many video games.
I like video games.
I could easily just piss away an entire evening playing civilization or the long dark or Minecraft or what have you.
But I hate myself the next day.
So I try and keep the video games in check.
I try and keep them as a bit of a reward.
It's like, okay, I've accomplished something a day.
I get to play a video game.
And so they're a small part of my life.
The same way, I mean, I drink a fair bit, but for other people, my brother-in-law, for example, you know, drinking probably isn't that much a part of his life.
I know, maybe it is.
I don't know him that well, but so you would think that giving up drinking, if you only drink socially, like you drink once a week and you only have three beers, it should be really easy to give up drinking, you'd think.
But it isn't.
When I gave up video games, I would constantly find myself turning on video games.
And then I'd have to remind myself: no, no, you gave it up, put it down.
And then, like, okay, now what am I supposed to do with myself?
What you find out is that these casual addictions, these addictions that you keep in check, are no less an addiction.
And you start to really question just how much control do I have over my life?
All the martial arts training in the world isn't going to tell you who you are when the chips are down.
When things start going sideways, are you going to stand and fight or are you going to cut and run?
You don't know that until you've actually been in a fight.
And, you know, training is a great idea.
You should definitely train.
But you don't know that about yourself until you're there.
And similarly, you don't know how addicted you are to something until you try and stop doing it.
And, you know, giving up something like video games or, you know, alcohol or sugary soda, giving it up for six weeks shouldn't be that difficult.
But you'll find out that it is.
You'll find out just how weak you are.
That it actually takes a lot of willpower to maintain all of this.
And that self-knowledge is invaluable.
One of the ideas I've expressed in the past is how with modern technology and conveniences and so forth, we think that we're gods.
Okay, you don't know what a man's like until he's hungry.
And how many of us have ever been hungry?
How many of us know what we are?
There's a really ugly sort of atheistic self-righteousness in the whole damn thing where we dismiss our ancestors as being superstitious or credulous or what have you when we've never experienced adversity ourselves.
And so Lent is a little bit of that adversity to remind you of who you are and how hard it is for the spirit to overcome the body.
So that's the one big benefit of Lent.
The other is it's mirror inverse.
Because sometimes you develop a bad habit.
Again, it could be alcohol, video games, sugary soda.
It could be social media.
It could be news.
It could be any number of things.
And so maybe you give that up for Lent, and you see a dramatic improvement in your life.
And then you get rid of that vice, that thing that's been eating up so much of your time.
And you think, well, hey, what else is eating up my time?
What else is not growing wheat?
What else should I get rid of?
So Lent, it shows you, shows you quite a bit about your own nature without even needing to do anything too drastic.
And because it's such a radical and temporary imposition.
And you're doing it in a social scene.
You're doing it with others.
So you're expected to adhere to what everybody else is doing.
That strengthens you.
At the end, what I'm saying is that Lent is useful psychologically.
And it's a great example of why culture is so damned important.
Why connecting with your fellows is so important.
And so we're halfway through Lent season right now, but I would invite all of you to pick something, not something that's super difficult, something minor that you think is minor.
