It’s so easy to get caught up in the bustle, to get in a rush, to turn on autopilot and just do it.

I was in that mode for a few days, and then I got a headache, and I started thinking, “what does this headache mean? Am I sick? Am I dying? Can I make it go away before the concert tonight? Should I take ibuprofen or acetaminophen or naproxen sodium or aspirin? Should I have something more natural? Have I not been eating healthy enough? Should I have more coffee? Was my headache caused by drinking too much coffee?”

I was in the middle of this rush, driving back from the grocery store, when traffic slowed down and I saw a young couple with a baby in a stroller, and they were walking slowly. They really stood out against all the rushing cars and red lights and green lights and rushing people on the sidewalks. They were just walking slowly.

It was very different than how I usually walk. I walk after I eat, and I walk briskly, to reduce blood sugar spikes. But perhaps it’s not brisk walking and reducing blood sugar spikes that give us health. Perhaps it’s the peace and enjoyment of walking just to walk.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps it really is healthier to focus on reducing blood sugar and getting two hours of exercise per week. But even if it is healthier, is it better? Is it happier? Does it improve our quality of life or just give us the promise of additional years?

Live fast if you’d like. But at least stop to ask if that way makes you happy. As for me, living slow in a world of instant gratification, constant rushing, and pervasive stimulation, is a difficult but beautiful skill and a powerful rebellion.

For those having a difficult time understanding or experiencing faith, I highly recommend starting with an understanding of faithfulness as defined by Dietrich von Hildebrand, one of the most underrated philosophers of our time. Faithfulness is not quite the same thing as faith, but it is a step towards it.

I won’t add much to the text below because Hildebrand wrote it with such elegance. I doubt I could do any better. However, I added a few notes in parentheses and italics. The rest of the quotes are from Dietrich von Hildebrand’s book, The Art of Living.

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Dietrich von Hildebrand on Faithfulness

“How many people there are who are never lastingly influenced by great works of art, or by delight in beautiful landscapes, or by contact with great personalities. The momentary impression may be strong, but it strikes no deep root in them; it is not firmly held in their superactual life but disappears as soon as another impression makes its appearance. These men are like a sieve through which everything runs. Though they can be good, kindly, and honest, they cleave to a childish, unconscious position; they have no depth.”

“Such people are continually in danger of becoming traitors to themselves or to others.”

On the other hand, “the persevering man holds on to everything that has revealed itself to him as a true, genuine value. The advantage of liveliness that the present possesses over the past has no power over his life when compared with the inner weight of deep truths that he has once recognized, and of values that he has once grasped. The importance of the role played by a given thing in his present consciousness is exclusively determined by the height of its value, and in no way by its mere presence.”

“Such men are consequently protected from the tyranny of fashion. A thing never makes a deep impression upon them merely because it is modern, because it is momentarily ‘in the air,’ but only because it has a value, because it is beautiful, good, and true.” (notice Hildebrand’s mention of the transcendentals)

“The lives of these men are meaningfully integrated, and in their course reflect the objective gradation of values.” (this is a beautiful definition of integrity, more elegant and clear than Jung’s definition)

“While the inconstant man is a prey to accidental impressions and situations, the constant man dominates his own impressions.”

“[Men with integrity] understand that an important truth is not less interesting and less worthy of concern because we have known it for a long time. They understand, above all, that the obligation to respond to a good possessing a value is not limited to the moment in which it is grasped.”

“He alone for whom values never lose their efficacy and charm, once they have been revealed to him, and who never lets a truth which he has grasped drop into oblivion, will really do justice to the proper character of the world of truth and values; for he alone is capable of remaining faithful to objects possessing value.”

“This constancy or fidelity in the true sense of the world is, as we see, a fundamental moral attitude of man.”

“He alone will stand firm in trials.”

“It is so because this man lives from the depth, and masters every moment from the depth.” (this is very similar to Jordan Peterson saying one should be guided by an ethic, a way of life)

“He will learn from every situtation of life and will grow in every situation, for in him the measure of genuine values remains alive; while the inconstant man yields now to one, now to another impression, and becomes so entirely a prey of each that in the depth of his soul everything passes on more or less without leaving a trace.”

“The constant man alone will prefer what is more important to what is less so, what is more valuable to the less, while the unstable person will at best respond indiscriminately to all values, recognizing no hierarchy in them. Nothing is, in fact, more important for moral growth, for the very moral life of a person, than consideration for the objective hierarchy of values, and the capacity to give priority to that which is objectively higher.”

“But constancy is also a condition for any confidence on the part of the person himself and above all for heroic faith. The unstable man is not only undeserving of confidence, but he himself will be incapable of a firm, unshakable confidence either in other men, in truth, or in God Himself.” (confidence in God is also known as faith, so Hildebrand is saying integrity/constancy, faithfulness, is a prerequisite to faith) “For such a man lacks the strength to nourish his soul upon a value once discovered. Therefore, when night and obscurity surround him, or when other strong impressions assail him, he loses faith. It is no accident that in Latin the word fides means both fidelity and faith. For constancy is an essential constituent of all capacity to believe, and consequently of all religion.” (in this paragraph, Hildebrand claims that integrity/constancy, faithfulness, is a prerequisite for faith. In other words, a man must abide by a hierarchy of values in order to have faith)

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Isn’t Hildebrand brilliant? He offers a very different view — seemingly more in line with the complexities of the individual human being — than modern psychology. Psychology simply says, “the man is high in trait openness,” or “the man is low in neuroticism,” and “he will remain mostly that way for his entire life,” but that is too deterministic. Hildebrand makes the case that one version/trait is better than the other, and it can be developed in any man. Any man can become faithful by learning what things are truly valuable and determining the hierarchy of those things.

Faith is scant in our world. Perhaps it is because we have not learned what is truly valuable, or we have not determined what is most valuable, or we do not value anything enough to follow it all the way to the bitter end. Perhaps being aware of this, we can change, we can become faithful, and we can experience that wonderful virtue called faith.

Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow and how to integrate the traits in my own shadow into my psyche. I searched the internet for movies influenced by Jung’s ideas. One movie that came up in my search was Watchmen.

My friends have always loved the movie and have recommended it to me several times, but I’m usually not into superhero movies, so I never got around to watching it.

When I learned that it was influenced by Jung’s ideas, and remembered how much my friends loved it, I decided I better give it a shot. After watching it, in addition to many hours spent reading Jung and many hours spent thinking, I still don’t fully understand Jung’s concept of the shadow. I have to wonder if he made it up just to give people an impossible puzzle to solve so that we would always have something to aim for.

“I have observed that a life directed to an aim is in general better, richer, and healthier than an aimless one, and that it is better to go forwards with the stream of time than backwards against it.”

Carl Jung, Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche

I cannot tell you exactly how Watchmen fits in with Jung other than that it is quite mythical and Jung’s ideas were heavily influenced by mythology. But it’s a good movie.

One scene especially struck me. The scene is an interaction between two superheroes who were once together in a committed relationship.

The man is Dr Manhattan, a nuclear scientist and depressed nihilist. He is fascinated by physics and the nature of the material world, but he has no sense of the spiritual dimension. He is only interested in matter, not consciousness or life or relationships. To a nihilist, everything is meaningless. Everything is just matter. Because he knows basically everything about how the material world works, he has no belief in miracles. He knows that whatever happens, it will abide by the laws of nature.

The woman is Silk Spectre. Actually, she’s Silk Spectre II. Her mother was Silk Spectre. I will just call her Silk Spectre.

When the world is on the brink of nuclear war, Dr Manhattan teleports Silk Spectre to Mars.

On Mars, the two superheroes get into an argument. Silk Spectre is begging Dr Manhattan to come back to Earth and stop the humans from destroying themselves.

“Jon, please. You have to stop this. Everyone will die!” Silk Spectre pleas.

“And the universe will not even notice.” Dr Manhattan replies, his voice plagued with ennui. “In my opinion, the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon. Just look around you. Mars gets along perfectly well without so much as a microorganism.”

He goes on about the material beauty of Mars and then asks, “how would all of this be greatly improved by an oil pipeline, by a shopping mall?”

“So it’s too much to ask for a miracle?” Silk Spectre asks.

Dr Manhattan replies, “miracles, by their definition, are meaningless. Only what can happen does happen.”

After some more arguing, Silk Spectre tells Dr Manhattan to send her back to Earth where she can die along with her mother and friends and the other humans. Dr Manhattan complains that she refuses to see things from his perspective because she is afraid. She tells him she’s not afraid, so he places his hand on her forehead and shows Silk Spectre her life from his perspective.

When she sees it, she sees an evil man who tries to rape her mother. She also sees that her mother, at a later time, consented to having sex with that same evil man. That is how she was conceived. The evil man is Edward Blake, one of the Watchmen. Her father was an evil man who tried to rape her mother. Her mother was a woman who knowingly loved a rapist.

Upon seeing this, she collapses and says, “my life is just one big joke.” But Dr Manhattan also has a change of heart when he sees Silk Spectre’s history.

“Will you smile if I admit I was wrong?” he asks.

“About what?”

“Miracles. Events with astronomical odds of occurring, like oxygen turning into gold. I’ve longed to witness such an event, and yet I neglect that, in human coupling, millions upon millions of cells compete to create life for generation after generation until finally your mother loves a man — Edward Blake, the Comedian, a man she has every reason to hate. And out of that contradiction, against unfathomable odds, it’s you, only you, that emerged to distill so specific a form from all that chaos. It’s like turning air into gold. A miracle. And so I was wrong. Now dry your eyes and let’s go home.”

Perhaps empathy is the real miracle in all of this — in the encounter between Dr Manhattan and Silk Spectre, and in our own lives.

Human beings have the ability to actually feel another person’s feelings and to understand another person’s thoughts. We don’t have Dr Manhattan’s super powers. We have empathy. We can feel another person’s suffering and shed our own tears. We can feel another person’s success and dance in excitement. We can learn another person’s history and understand why they act the way they do.

Empathy is also a weakness. It is a vector through which many infectious demons, neuroses, and bad ideas can be transmitted. When two people allow themselves to take on one another’s feelings, there is great risk, but if both are committed to truth and integrity and love, there is also great reward. It opens our eyes to the humanness of others.

Empathy can chip away at the prison walls of nihilism like it did for Dr Manhattan. When he sees the impossibly rare history of Silk Spectre, he realizes that just because something is understood doesn’t mean it is not miraculous. Something can be a miracle even though it is physically possible. And something physically impossible, well, maybe that is each one of our lives. Maybe consciousness (which science still can’t quite understand) defies the laws of nature. Maybe life itself is a miracle.

So “dry your eyes for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes.”

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Quentin Tarantino is a movie director/writer/producer. His movies are often very violent. They’re also really good. The stories are unique. The characters and their interactions are deep. The shots are interesting. The movies feel quite “biblical.”

In fact, one of his most popular movies, Pulp Fiction, has a Bible verse in it:

“And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.”

Ezekiel 25:17

A couple years ago a priest challenged me, and everyone else listening to his homily, to read through the Bible cover-to-cover. I accepted the challenge, and have been reading about a chapter a day ever since.

As I read, various verses and parts stood out to me. One of my favorite parts is when Jacob is at the well. There is a big stone covering the well. It’s so big that it takes several shepherds to move it. But then comes Rachel. Jacob, for the first time, lays eyes on her. Immediately, he goes up and rolls the stone away by himself. Then he goes over to Rachel, kisses her, and yelps.

What a boss.

As I continued reading through the books, I found myself amused by some of the detailed descriptions of gore and other brutal scenes. They reminded me of scenes in Quentin Tarantino movies like Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction. I started collecting them.

I’m up to the book of Psalms now, so there may be more to come, and I may have missed some along the way, but here is what I have for now.

2 Kings 9:30–37

Death of Jezebel
Jehu came to Jezreel, and when Jezebel heard of it, she shadowed her eyes, adorned her hair, and looked down from her window. 31 As Jehu came through the gate, she cried out, “Is all well, you Zimri, murderer of your master?” Jehu looked up to the window and shouted, “Who is on my side? Who?” At this, two or three eunuchs looked down toward him. “Throw her down,” he ordered. They threw her down, and some of her blood spurted against the wall and against the horses. Jehu trod over her body and, after eating and drinking, he said: “Attend to that accursed woman and bury her; for she was the daughter of a king.” But when they went to bury her, they found nothing of her but the skull, the feet, and the hands. They returned to Jehu, and when they told him, he said, “This is the word the Lord spoke through his servant Elijah the Tishbite: In the confines of Jezreel the dogs shall devour the flesh of Jezebel. The corpse of Jezebel shall be like dung in the field in the confines of Jezreel, so that no one can say: This was Jezebel.”

2 Kings 15:15–16

As for the rest of the acts of Shallum, with the conspiracy he carried out, these are recorded in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. At that time, Menahem attacked Tappuah, all its inhabitants, and its whole district as far as Tirzah, because they did not let him in. He attacked them; he even ripped open all their pregnant women.

Judith 13:6–10

She went to the bedpost near the head of Holofernes, and taking his sword from it, she drew close to the bed, grasped the hair of his head, and said, “Strengthen me this day, Lord, God of Israel!” Then with all her might she struck his neck twice and cut off his head. She rolled his body off the bed and took the canopy from its posts. Soon afterward, she came out and handed over the head of Holofernes to her maid, who put it into her food bag. Then the two went out together for prayer as they were accustomed to do.

2 Maccabees 6:18–23

Eleazar, one of the foremost scribes, a man advanced in age and of noble appearance, was being forced to open his mouth to eat pork. But preferring a glorious death to a life of defilement, he went forward of his own accord to the instrument of torture, spitting out the meat as they should do who have the courage to reject food unlawful to taste even for love of life.

Those in charge of that unlawful sacrifice took the man aside, because of their long acquaintance with him, and privately urged him to bring his own provisions that he could legitimately eat, and only to pretend to eat the sacrificial meat prescribed by the king. Thus he would escape death, and be treated kindly because of his old friendship with them. But he made up his mind in a noble manner, worthy of his years, the dignity of his advanced age, the merited distinction of his gray hair, and of the admirable life he had lived from childhood. Above all loyal to the holy laws given by God, he swiftly declared, “Send me to Hades!”

2 Maccabees 14:41–46

But when the troops, on the point of capturing the tower, were forcing the outer gate and calling for fire to set the door ablaze, Razis, now caught on all sides, turned his sword against himself, preferring to die nobly rather than fall into the hands of vile men and suffer outrages unworthy of his noble birth. In the excitement of the struggle he failed to strike exactly. So while the troops rushed in through the doors, he gallantly ran up to the top of the wall and courageously threw himself down into the crowd. But as they quickly drew back and left an opening, he fell into the middle of the empty space. Still breathing, and inflamed with anger, he got up and ran through the crowd, with blood gushing from his frightful wounds. Then, standing on a steep rock, as he lost the last of his blood, he tore out his entrails and flung them with both hands into the crowd, calling upon the Lord of life and of spirit to give these back to him again. Such was the manner of his death.

2 Maccabees 15:30–35

Then Judas, that man who was ever in body and soul the chief defender of his fellow citizens, and had maintained from youth his affection for his compatriots, ordered Nicanor’s head and right arm up to the shoulder to be cut off and taken to Jerusalem. When he arrived there, he assembled his compatriots, stationed the priests before the altar, and sent for those in the citadel. He showed them the vile Nicanor’s head and the wretched blasphemer’s arm that had been boastfully stretched out against the holy dwelling of the Almighty. He cut out the tongue of the godless Nicanor, saying he would feed it piecemeal to the birds and would hang up the other wages of his folly opposite the temple. At this, everyone looked toward heaven and praised the Lord who manifests himself: “Blessed be the one who has preserved undefiled his own place!” Judas hung Nicanor’s head and arm on the wall of the citadel, a clear and evident sign to all of the Lord’s help.

Psalm 3:8

Arise, Lord! Save me, my God! For you strike the cheekbone of all my foes; you break the teeth of the wicked.

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In Biblical symbolism, the number six (also 666) is a sign of evil. It often represents incompleteness or a perpetual state of work.

In the book of Genesis, God created the world in six days and then “blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done” (Genesis 2:3).

The number six signifies that rest has not yet come. That which makes work worth doing has not yet come.

“Ain’t no rest for the wicked.”

Cage the Elephant

Any practicing member of a Judeo-Christian religion knows that the week must contain a day of rest. Perhaps, though, in our culture we do not take this seriously enough. Moses, inspired by God, once said, “on six days work may be done, but the seventh day shall be holy to you as the sabbath of complete rest to the Lord. Anyone who does work on that day shall be put to death. You shall not even light a fire in any of your dwellings on the sabbath day” (Exodus 35:2–3).

Moses makes it clear that “rest to the Lord” is vital.

Defining Rest

The meaning of rest, in the commandment and in this writing, is not “sleep.” In the context of the commandment, Moses is contrasting rest with work. Rest is time spent not working. Rest is activity with no purpose.

For the Best Rest, Worship

In Leisure: The Basis of Culture, the German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper writes about the importance of a holy day of rest. He points out that “the vacancy left by absence of worship is filled by mere killing of time and by boredom, which is directly related to inability to enjoy leisure; for one can only be bored if the spiritual power to be leisurely has been lost.”

To get at what Pieper is saying, it may be helpful to look at an observation about the Catholic liturgy made by the German Catholic theologian, Romano Guardini. He wrote that the liturgy “has one thing in common with the play of a child and the life of art — it has no purpose, but is full of profound meaning. It is not work, but play. To be at play, or to fashion a work of art in God’s sight — not to create but to exist — such is the essence of the liturgy” (The Spirit of the Liturgy).

Romano is calling liturgy (formal worship) a form of play.

Pieper points out that it is best to use our leisure time to worship. If we don’t use it for that, then it is filled by boredom.

If we fill our leisure time with boredom, then we will not enjoy it. If we fill it with work, it is not leisure time at all. But if we fill it with worship, then we have tapped into the greatest rest known to man: divine play.

In a gist, the best way to rest is to play with God.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

Jesus Christ, Matthew 11:28–30

Fight Oppression with Rest

Some of the most notorious men of the past couple hundred years have promoted work-without-rest as a virtue.

In Nazi Germany, a sign was placed above the entrance to the Dachau concentration camp that said, “Arbeit Macht Frei,” or “work sets you free” [1].

Under the Soviet regime, a continuous working week, called the nepreryvka, was instilled. Workers were given two days off per week, but they were dispersed. Different people had off on different days so that industrial machinery was never left idle. This was detrimental to liturgical and family life.

One complaint, published in a Soviet newspaper, said, “what is there for us to do at home if our wives are in the factory, our children at school and nobody can visit us? It is no holiday if you have to have it alone” [2].

The sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel points out that it is possible that the nepreryvka’s detriment to religious and family life was intentional. Without a common resting day, it is easier for societal powers to divide and conquer because it is harder for the people to unite and stand up for themselves [2].

It is harder for friendships to form, and friendships are a grave threat to tyrants. When two or more people find a common goal (this is how CS Lewis defines friendship), they are capable of revolution. Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft and changed the world. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak did the same when they started Apple. Revolutions begin with friendships. Taking away a common day of rest, thus straining friendships, is a great way for an absolutist state to maintain its power.

Another effect of the nepreryvka was that religious adherence was made impractical, if not impossible. Nobody could worship together on Sundays or feast days. This may have been intentional because the Communist Soviet Union saw religion as a threat to its own power.

In his book The Undiscovered Self, Carl Jung points out that absolutist states, like the Soviet Union, see statistical reality — things which can be proven — as the only reality. Religion threatens that reality by claiming that there exist things which cannot be proven.

The Soviet rulers needed the state’s reality to be the only reality. That way, they could be the moral authority. That they could dictate each man’s moral decisions. They needed to be the holder of truth, above criticism. They needed individuals to outsource their moral decision-making to the state. And many are willing to do so because moral decision-making requires deep thinking and great responsibility.

However, outsourcing one’s morals becomes a problem when the moral authority tells us to kill (like in the Rwandan Genocide), to turn in his brother if he speaks out against the state (like in the Soviet Union), or that some other evil is no longer evil (like abortion in our current state). This can cause men and women to act against their own consciences and commit atrocities.

Not every individual succumbs to the state’s moral dictates, but enough might. Taking away the common day of rest makes it more difficult for people to come together, to debate and bond over moral discussions, to share ideas, and to think.

It seems that a common tactic among tyrants is to not allow their victims proper rest. This enhances their power. It also means that rest is rebellion. Rest, especially through liturgical worship, is a way to fight the tyrants. If we don’t take our rest, then, we are giving in.

Get Some Rest

Work is important, but so is a common day of rest. Cage the Elephant sang, “ain’t no rest for the wicked,” but I wonder if it’s the other way around. Something like, “rest, when done right, keeps us from the wicked,” or “rest keeps the wicked from us.”

Either way, it seems that rest, especially in the form of a common day of worship, keeps us whole (like the number seven in the Bible), and taking it away fractures us and we become exposed to grave danger.

What does this say about our current culture where everything is open 24/7, devices are sending us notifications at all hours, and productivity is all the rage?

…I am going to go get some rest now.

Sources

1. https://academyofideas.com/2015/11/fear-and-social-control/
2. https://www.grin.com/document/106155
3. https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-American-Bible-Revised-Edition-NABRE-Bible/

Footnotes

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/11/03/arbeit-macht-frei-the-notorious-nazi-sign-thieves-stole-from-a-concentration-camp/
2. https://www.history.com/news/soviet-union-stalin-weekend-labor-policy

he spent his life in his lab
searching for a way
to live forever

now on his deathbed
he wishes he had accepted fate
and lived when he had the chance

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“Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it.”

Michael Ende, Momo

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Before clocks, life was not measured so much in hours or minutes, and even days and years were less important.

Instead, life was measured in moments and seasons. Crops were planted not on a certain date, but when the oak tree’s leaves were the size of a squirrel’s foot.

We have many reasons to be grateful for the invention of clocks, but when you’re on your death bed, would you rather count the number of minutes you lived or remember the moments?

Think about your life so far in terms of time. It doesn’t seem very long does it? It goes by in a flash. But think about all the moments, the memories, and you have some substance.

If you often find yourself bored, burnt out or in a slump, limiting your exposure to hyper-stimulation might put you in a better state of mind.

We live in a hyper-stimulating world. Our dopamine and serotonin receptors get slammed all day. Music on the commute, TV news in the office dining room, glowing computer screens everywhere, impatient emails, sugar-packed treats, coffee, coffee, coffee. After a while, we start to need hyper-stimulation to feel anything at all.

Your receptors are burnt out. You want to do something different, but nothing seems interesting or exciting. You try star gazing, but you get outside and find yourself bored in just a couple minutes. You try yoga, but you lose focus with that too. You meet up with a couple friends. Sadly, the experience leaves you unsatisfied, bored. Life seems so bland.

The problem could be that your friends are uninteresting, but it’s more likely that the situation didn’t give your brain’s receptors as much dopamine or serotonin as they’re used to. Your brain is accustomed to huge hits of caffeine and adrenaline and bright lights and loud noises, and…squirrel! The simple, quiet parts of life have become futile and dull because they don’t produce enough dopamine for your dopamine receptors which, thanks to the constant hyper-stimulation, have developed a very high tolerance.

We aren’t meant to live like dogs, chasing the first thing that stimulates our minds. As humans, we are the only beings on Earth that can freely act against our animal instincts. That means we can make changes to improve our lives. It means you can climb out of that slump.

You do have to climb a bit before you get to a better place. Because you will limit your exposure to hyper-stimulation, your boredom may increase at first. It will take time for your brain to adjust to a calmer, less stimulating lifestyle. However, when your brain recalibrates, the simple parts of life will once again bring you joy. Grabbing lunch with a good friend will make you happy. Seeing a cardinal in a tree during a snowy walk will cause your heart to flutter with excitement. Reading a book, an actual full-length book, will be possible once again.

To reset your receptors, you need to remove or limit the amount of hyper-stimulation in your life. Here are some ways you can do that.

• If you feel bored, remember there is nothing wrong with sitting quietly, thinking of absolutely nothing, being with God, staring into space for a while. That boredom may just be your brain telling you to spend some time with your abba.
• Spend 7 to 10 minutes every morning in silent prayer. Let your mind wander, but when it comes back, bring your focus back to God.
• Set time limits on your app usage; particularly on YouTube, dating apps, games, and social media as these are hyper-stimulating.
• Read for at least 20 minutes each night before you go to bed.
• Cook dinner as slowly as possible. Don’t buy canned or pre-chopped vegetables. Spend time adding small garnishes that will make your food healthy and beautiful. Make everything from scratch.
• If you drink coffee, try making it weaker. That way you can still drink the same amount of delicious hot beverage, but with less stimulant (caffeine).
• Pick up a calm, slow, useless hobby like whittling, bicycle refurbishing, old-fashioned film developing, baking, or a musical instrument.
• Do some yoga. It doesn’t have to be a specific routine. The basic idea of yoga is stretching mixed with deep breathing. Maybe your back is sore from standing at the Goo Goo Dolls concert all night, so you do some gentle back stretches. Maybe your calves and feet are tight from skiing all weekend, so you do some poses that stretch your legs and feet. All the while, take deep breaths as you move in and out of your stretches. If you need further guidance, take a yoga class or watch a couple yoga routine videos to get some ideas.
• Develop the virtue of patience by learning about and practicing good-will, humility, and complete trust and abandonment to God.

“God is secretly present with the suffering soul, and in reward for patience, it receives a secret strength and peace.”

William Ullathorne, Patience and Humility

Resetting your receptors is about slowing and quieting down, and it might be the difference between a good life and a bad one. Life consists mostly of simple, bland moments. But bland does not mean tasteless. You just have to retrain your brain to taste them. You have to let those burnt out receptors heal.

It’s like switching from Oreos to oranges. Oreos are so packed with flavor that they make oranges seem dull, but when you’ve cut out the sugary sweets, you start to notice the subtle beauty contained in the fruit. Eventually, you come to actually prefer the fruit for its nuances of flavor.

The hyper-stimulating media, messages, and drinks that you consume are like Oreos. They make mild levels of stimulation seem boring. They make everyday life feel bland. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. The next time you catch yourself thinking, “nothing sounds interesting,” or “everything is boring,” consider subduing the hyper-stimulation in your life. Give yourself the opportunity to sense and enjoy the small gifts life has to offer.