Joyful Self-Discipline

I have a tendency to turn my self-discipline into a sort of hard pushiness. I too easily want to tell myself I am doing things 'wrong.'

I effectively (emotionally) forget that self-discipline is a glorious, wonderful, freeing thing. If you can, in fact, make yourself do what you know you ought to do, what you know you long-term would like yourself to do, it is incredibly nice. Or so I found. I would call it a kind of Narnian self-discipline. A joyous discipline that knows that every step you take now will lead to great fruit later- a hopeful outlook.

I am very numb these days, so it's hard to remember this. I am very hopeless, downtrod. I used to take great, great pleasure in seeing myself improve- seeing myself become wiser and stronger, and also more happy. To be capable, to be able, to be able to feel all the ups and downs without the downs SMITING you, is wonderful. To know there is a future, and that it is not all in your control- that you can let go that tight monster-grip on the future.

This, of course, only works for me because I believe that God ultimately has the reins, even though I don't feel as if I believe that right now. One goes emotionally through ups and downs. So I can lean into this, and lean into the beauty of self-discipline- it is a part of sanctification, and sanctification is the most beautiful thing that can happen to me!

The hard work of self-discipline goes through also the path of being able to accept our weakness, which is probably what is hardest for me to accept (perhaps would be for anyone?). We all have different forms of weakness. For me at least right now, I am seeing that I want to be able to do whatever I 'should be able to,' which is also what I want, because I love to be capable long-term. But I have lost sight of the love and gone solely at this as 'I NEED TO BE CAPABLE,' thus losing sight of what would motivate me to be capable in the first place! I thrive on motivation, I thrive on intense enjoyment of reality, and without it, when I am numb, I am hopeless and desperate.

This is morphing into talking about the love aspect: my goal needs to be the love of 'what is right,' because that actually helps me, rather than the 'need to be capable,' which is rather utilitarian and devoid of meaning. I can ignite it with meaning, and then immediately I go back to an infatuation with the beauty of Humans As Creative Beings.

So I just get back to where I started years ago, and that's good. But- to feel it! How to feel it?

Dietrich von Hildebrand on Beauty in Light of Redemption

My dear Madame W. shared this chapter, 'Beauty in the Light of the Redemption,' which relates to previous posts about beauty, completion, perfection.

It was a wonderful post which I will still be mulling over- it is hard for me to accept that this Highest Beauty can be a real, true thing that I am allowed not to shun. I have been damning it in my mind for a long time because I have most strongly desired it. I felt as a child that beauty could not be God, but I also knew that I was 'overthinking things.' It is an odd situation. I told myself that what I wanted could not be what was.

I was playing a kind of self-hatred game with myself my whole life, trying to bereave myself of everything that made life worth living, as if that makes one righteous.

I know that if I opened myself to believing Beauty to really be Good, I would have to deal with my tendency to make Beauty and other un-primary things primary. I probably am doing it subconsciously even as I am 'damning' it within myself.

If I am indeed damning it within myself, and it is truly 'of God,' then that would mean I am sinning in that respect. I'm not afraid of this: it is actually a relief to realise it might be wrong, but I am 'damning' Beauty because I imagine it to be for some higher good that I am damning it, but I think it is going about things the wrong way. The way to put Beauty in its actual place is to seek first the Kingdom of God. Then 'all these things' will be added unto me. God created this world and all that He intended is meant to be. He did not create an accident that is to be 'put away' when some process is done with. The world is part of the end. The goal, the telos. We are creaturely things, the world our setting.

I immediately think: then I must fight with myself, make myself see Beauty as good! But again, this is looking at this wrong. I look at everything as a fight, as me having to punch myself around till things fall into their proper place. I need to stop it. Stop looking at myself as something to be pushed around and forced into its place. To be sorted, to be dealt with. It is very, very hard to shed this... and at this very moment, I am in a bit of a rut and can't for the life of me see how I would begin to relax into not damning Beauty.

Procrastination and Emotions

Apparently some people are thinking that procrastination is not about time management, or life management and planning in general, but is instead a matter of emotions. Here is an article for your pleasure.

It makes sense to me, as I have long struggled with certain elements of procrastination (who doesn't, these days?). I tend to think we are in an age of procrastination; everyone doing it in their own way. It is not good. The prevalence of all sorts of excuses not to do obvious everyday duties, excuses not to do things that will toughen you up, worries me.

And it is about emotions. We have to learn to buoy ourselves up so that we can lionheartedly deal with the things life is made of. We should not shirk them, or fear them. We should not imagine we need something to assuage our unmotivated gloom. A lot of the people I know seem to live to some degree on the Scale of Acedia. These days many of us suffer from not having any reason to live, and we also don't seem to realise that we will at some point suffer from feeling there is no point to live. If we knew that we would feel that way, and that it ultimately means nothing to whether life has a point at all or not, then we might be a lot better off.

But without that knowledge, we are not armed against the impending dark raincloud of pointlessness. We are incredibly susceptible to stories of doomful happenings and despair-inducing realities. This inadvertently heads into the territory of 'what to do about suffering,' but that's not the point here.

Ultimately, though, we'll have to deal with life often seeming a hopeless, pointless thing. The question we will have to answer is whether it even matters. If you constantly live worrying about whether life is hopeless or not, you'll probably never get to the actual meat of living, and therefore you'll be cut off from ever feeling like there's a point to living.

Sadly, this is exactly one of those things in life where, if you want something, you're going to have to act as if you had it so that you can get it. To feel motivated, you're going to have to just do it anyway and then when you produce results, and feel all exhausted (but happily so) at the end of the day, you'll be all happy to sit on your front porch with your feet on chair puffing your evening smokerings (or better, if you're actually a wizard, Harry). You'll possibly sometimes feel rip-roaring for the next day to come so that you can become even more happily productive.

To overcome procrastination, you have to act as if you didn't procrastinate. It is the only way.

Weakness and Strength

Over the years starting in childhood, I tried to defy my own desire for things that lighten my mood. I tried to become strong by not needing anything to lighten me up, to lighten the gloom and greyness of life. But now I'm just really crusty and irritated and want to die.

I'm not so sure it worked so well.

I went too far. There is a joyous spot in between extremes, I think. A joyous spot of realising you're weak and sinful and need help and not imagining you can do it all yourself. Not imagining that strength means being solitary, that needing a helping hand is weakness.

Now I cannot accept help or crutches (except the many crutches I naturally cling to after all that I've forced myself to deny). I cling to things to support me in the darkness, alone, unwilling to admit what I have done to myself, unwilling to admit that even as I try to be strong, I am weak under the surface, clinging to addictions that one can always find and hide in the secret darkness.

I am telling myself, so that I can keep myself out of the darkest depths, that I have managed it! I am strong, I have defied death! But I am losing my mind and falling into complete insanity. I can't think clearly, I can't see beautiful things, I won't let myself see beautiful things because if I dared see them, I might start needing them to lighten my mood! I can't possibly let myself even have the possibility of lightening my mood.

Then I would be at risk of falling off the skyscraper of hope and joy and crash back into the abyss of horrifying nothingness! If I dared let myself think there really is anything there in this world, that this world even exists, that Beauty exists, I would be terribly at risk of experiencing a crushing blow to the head that I could never recover from.

Right?

Of course, this is no way to live. I have to choose: do I live, or do I die? And living means opening myself to beauty, and opening myself to the scary possibilities of being crushed, of being teased, of being found to be ignorant and stupid, of not getting to do what I would like to do, all those things.

I have to let it all come flooding upon me, gripping me with an iron grip. At first it will be hard, having lived so long in a state of Stoic Doldrums. The real difficulty comes from what I most fear, which I won't talk about right now. It is not fear of feeling things, but fear of things far beyond that. If only it were just feelings- I rather like that idea.

Thinking Oneself to Death

I have been trying to transcend perspective, to question myself to such an extent that nothing I think goes unthought-about. Always checking what I assume, always questioning myself. But it is exhausting. You can’t keep questioning your own perception. You have to accept that you merely perceive and build that up over time- experience, simple experience. It wastes ever so much time to worry about ‘why you thought that’ and whether it came up because of some previous bias (in the hopes that in the future you can never be accused of 'bias').

Everything probably does arise due to ‘bias’, but all bias is, when it really comes down to it, is that we are not God, not able to see everything happening everywhere, and therefore don’t know what we’re really looking at. If one insists on being aware of the bias, one can only settle back and be patient to wait till new information comes in to illuminate previous information and give it its context.

But it is all a waste of one’s mind to worry about it at all. And the person who worries about it is in danger of being cocky that he knows better than everyone else because he at least is willing to question himself (even to the point of questioning his own existence!). I have just the exact same kind of hubris that many recent philosophers may have had (here I question my assumption that they had it).

I have been exhausting myself. When I read a book, I don’t merely listen to it from my perspective; I think about what others would think of what I am thinking of it, and I think about where the author came from in saying what he’s saying, and think about what people who disagree with him might say to him and I get mentally to the exhausting point of thinking, what’s the point of thinking at all if all thinking is the result of … previous thinking? Oh dear. Oh dear, dear, dear.

Everything we think is contingent. I’m having to argue with myself that that is fine. But I should stop arguing with myself and be a simple peasant instead; back off out of this silly elitist tomfoolery of thinking I could possibly ever be truly objective. Who can? Nobody. No amount of self-questioning will work. And if you ever dare try to know all the knowledge in the world, your brain might just explode as in the Indiana Jones movie, The Crystal Skull, or you will at least go mildly insane (like I have) and wish you were dead.

I must meditate on what it would be to be a simple peasant. I have to stop this intellectualist nonsense. It is far better to go outside and wonder silly things about why that thing is there; did a squirrel pop by? Then move on to ‘I feel like a cup of tea!’ and ‘I feel like reading that essay by Lewis again where he talks about questioning ourselves to death…’ (Lewis probably wrote many such essays. Other people likely have, too. We’re all stuck inside a dystopian nightmare of self-important thinking!)

Things Made Well

Growing up in an oddball homeschooled family, I have a great love of well-made objects. I enjoyed seeing anything made really well out of leather, wood, whatever it might be. I got into historical sewing because I saw that I could perhaps make things well. I would not have been interested for the sake of costuming- I don't want it merely to look right, I want it to be the actual thing itself.

It is a little like Plato's ideals. I have always cared enormously about the actual thingness of a thing. The idea of it, the spirit of it, what it actually is, which is wrapped up in all of how to use it well, what it is really for, everything. And the variety of Things, and the variety of Things within a category of thing, is what makes life so very lovely. I got passionate about it when I was a living, breathing teenager, but since then my emotions have dulled.

There is nothing better than seeing a shoe (to get an example) that is made so well it isn't likely to fall apart unless you use it as it isn't intended to be used. Something made within an inch of its own death, made so well it will last, made of materials that won't go 'out of fashion', made in a style that won't go out of fashion, and so on. Something that lasts, that is useful, and is also beautifully made. Smooth, warm brown oiled leather, thick waxed linen thread, carved, shapely wooden heel (perhaps bound in leather)...

The characteristic I desire in everything I do is well-made-ness. The goal is always to head towards the beauty of perfection. We are here as stewards of this world to seek the best that we can do with all things. When we destroy, we create from it something new, something beautiful. Out of the ashes the phoenix is born. Out of our own darkness a great beauty is created; the birth of wisdom and experience. The well-made-ness is in every part of life. I seek it in every action I can do (when I am not being taken over in the style of The Screwtape Letters). And I must surrender myself to God's making me perfect... must surrender the control of keeping myself just the way I am, keeping myself in comfort and entertainment, in ease.

We only have freedom when we are completely, fully able to partake of creating out of the materials of this world (and ourselves; we are also stewards of ourselves). When we acknowledge we are stewards of this world in the way God made it and intended it to be, the ability to make things intensely beautiful is opened to us. We must look on the world as it is. This world is not cheap, not hastily thrown together. This world is a masterpiece (though broken and not as it should be now), and what we make in it ought to be a masterpiece as well.

It is hard for me to bear living now, when things are made so cheaply and to make things cheaply is not particularly minded. I have very high standards, and I'm not about to relax them. It is a good challenge to have on my head that I must try to do everything extremely well, and besides, I won't do it all well because I am an incredibly lazy person at heart. I really enjoy the strength of the challenge hanging over me, the sense that it gives me that I am really not all I crack myself up to be (because I am constantly cutting corners). It gives you a healthy sense of your own position in reality when you are not always managing what you intend to manage.

Thrill of Hope

If you sit in and picture the depravity of the Fall, the Thrill of Hope is possible. Our lives are good enough, comfortable enough, there are enough solutions to avoid the pain of the Fall for many of us here in the West, so we are immune to God's gift.

We avoid knowing about how broken things are, how painful things are- there has to be some solution, a comfort or an entertainment to numb our feelings, to numb our awareness to the brokenness of things.

We perhaps would like to live in a thrill, but we are never willing to get there through the right means. You can only get there through pain and sacrifice, the greatest pain of seeing we are unlovable, the greatest sacrifice of seeing we deserve nothing the way we are now. The pursuit of thrill, the pursuit of happiness, is all done with the humming sensation of 'I deserve it.' People even say that.

When I was a child, it might have been shocking to me that it would become so entirely normal to tell people and ourselves that 'we deserve a good life.' It is so painfully clear to me that I do not. How can people not see the darkness in themselves? To me the darkness in people is painfully obvious all the time. We are not good, and we never will be if we keep pretending we are- that is the worst fault!

First we die in our hearts, we die to our own ego, we die to any delusions of our own perfection and deserving, knowing we are base and ugly, broken beyond repair. Then, like the glimmer of spring creeping into Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, it is possible to take in that Someone saves us from that darkness within ourselves; that we need not be Good. Someone is good for us.

A possibility for relief, a great sigh out, falling down out of the exhaustion of pretending you are something, falling into the soft, consoling arms of a Father, falling into the relief that we do not control or run reality... that Someone Else can run it far better than we can. We are mere creatures. The whole of the world is not our purview. We only are our purview, we and the little daily things we touch, the people we know.

Little stones that start an avalanche.