{"id":7869,"date":"2021-11-03T14:41:49","date_gmt":"2021-11-03T18:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\/?p=7869"},"modified":"2021-11-03T14:41:49","modified_gmt":"2021-11-03T18:41:49","slug":"becoming-a-participant-in-your-own-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\/life-lines\/becoming-a-participant-in-your-own-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Becoming a participant in your own life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It\u2019s amazing how we can convince ourselves that we simply don\u2019t have the time to do even the little things that might make our lives demonstrably better. We race through our days feeling too overwhelmed and overscheduled to pray, to pay attention, to pause. If we take a closer look, we\u2019re likely to find we invest a tremendous amount of time \u2014 often unconsciously \u2014 in the very things that lead to us feeling disconnected and depressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This reality became uncomfortably clear to me recently when my eye doctor recommended that I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose for five minutes after using my prescription eye drops each morning. I groaned internally at the prospect of spending five whole minutes on this process. A technician in the same doctor\u2019s office then asked if I was putting hot compresses on my eyes and advised that I spend five minutes doing this while in the shower each day. Cue groan. It\u2019s somewhat comical and more than a little pathetic that I could possibly feel burdened by having to spend 10 minutes a day on practices that will only improve my life and my health. In an age of multi-tasking and mindless media scrolling, we\u2019ve created personal narratives that say we are far busier than we truly are and, in telling ourselves that lie, we rob ourselves of the chance to make the time for practices that can improve our physical health and promise to sooth our souls and calm our minds as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m enrolled in two training programs, one to become a spiritual director and another to become a meditation teacher. Because you cannot do either of those things without keeping up your own spiritual practice, we are required to spend a minimum of 20 minutes in silent meditation every day, preferably twice a day. There are evenings when I\u2019m scrolling through Facebook, slouched in an easy chair, complaining that I don\u2019t know how I\u2019ll fit in my meditation. I manage to miss the irony, on an almost-daily basis. As the old Nike ad said: Just do it! That slogan became a tag line for everything from sneakers to diets to prayer because it spoke to an age-old problem: acedia, as it was known during the Middle Ages, or what we would call listlessness, boredom, distraction to the point of not being able to get yourself to do what you want or need to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the reasons I sign up for training upon training \u2014 aside from my desire to teach \u2014 is because I know I need something to hold me accountable, something that will prompt me to set an alarm, wake up an hour earlier, sit in meditation before the sun comes up or close my eyes on a busy train and just be. When we get out of our own way, the 20 minutes that seemed impossible to manage one day becomes impossible to live without just a few weeks later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We can look to the monastics for guidance when it comes to the threat of acedia. In her book <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Acedia-Marriage-Monks-Writers-Life\/dp\/1594484384\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Acedia &amp; Me (opens in a new tab)\">Acedia &amp; Me<\/a><\/em>, Kathleen Norris writes: \u201cMonastic wisdom insists that when we are most tempted to feel bored, apathetic, and despondent over the meaningless of life when we are on the verge of discovering our true self in relation to God.\u201d That might seem unlikely when we\u2019re unable to get up the gusto to go for a walk or settle down to prayer, but the monks know of what they speak, with daily lives set to the rhythm of prayer and guided by a rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Too often our lives are ruled by bad habits and the path of least resistance. It&#8217;s time to stop letting life live us and become active participants. To do that we have to make the time \u2014 even if it\u2019s only for five minutes at first \u2014 to pause, pray, and be present in our own lives. Just do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This column first appeared in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cny.org\/stories\/becoming-active-participants-in-our-own-lives,23007?\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Nov. 4, 2021, issue  (opens in a new tab)\">Nov. 4, 2021, issue <\/a>of Catholic New York.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s amazing how we can convince ourselves that we simply don\u2019t have the time to do even the little things that might make our lives demonstrably better. We race through [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[704,101,178,516,214,705,618,706,699,71],"class_list":["post-7869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-lines","tag-acedia","tag-life-lines","tag-mindfulness","tag-monastic-life","tag-monasticism","tag-monk-in-the-world","tag-multitasking","tag-pandemic","tag-rule","tag-true-self"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Becoming a participant in your own life &#8211; Not Strictly Spiritual<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We make plenty of excuses for not showing up in our own life. 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