Kicking The Deadly Sloth!
The past few years, since Covid, I’ve really started to acknowledge that Freedom, as a principle, isn’t the ability to do whatever enters your brain. Rather, it’s the ability to overcome yourself (fears, worries, programming, impulses and even more, the evil that lurks within pushing one toward death and suppressing life and livelihood) and to unlock your full potential.
As I have been more and more steeped in this acknowledgement, all sorts of coincidences are happening, and I find my life lining itself up with my understanding. I’m not really surprised by any of this. Whenever I have looked within, throughout my entire life, and acknowledged some inner impediment to a sense of well being, and then, sincerely worked at overcoming said impediment through pursuing its opposite, my life has become more aligned, more graceful, more peaceful and ultimately, more lively!
Here’s a slew of aligning factors that happened for me this past few weeks.
In January, I started to acknowledge my shortcomings as a spouse. I noted my feelings of insecurity about our financial situation as a couple which I normally reacted to by scrambling feebly to make money while being a stay at home mom with no car and no real room to be doing this, abandoning housework to start another podcast or create another product. All the while, what was most needed was for me to really dive deeper into my domestic duties. I was leaving so much for my husband to do when he came home from work that he couldn’t focus on what he needed to do to get himself a better paying job. It was a bad cycle. He kept saying that he couldn’t focus on job hunting or education to get a better job because there was so much to do at home. But I never really took responsibility for any part of his dilemma… until recently.
I need to go back a minute.
It’s hard to be a stay at home mom today. It’s hard to feel guilt about not working and not making money to the point, we have to constantly reiterate this value to ourselves. However, doing so is like screaming into the void. It’s hard to believe yourself when no one else is on your side. Our society refuses to acknowledge the innate value of JUST being a homemaker. The second anyone tries to spell that value out: what it means to children, what it means to the spouse, what it costs to not be solely a homemaker as a vocation, what it is costing society to no longer have women filling this vocation, they get accused of “mommy shaming” the women who work while being a mother. “Working moms are equally as good and valuable at being a mom,” we are told. That statement alone pretty much decreases the value of 40 hours or more of our time to nothing. Thus, as a culture, we stamp out any attempt to articulate the value in mothering and homemaking as a vocation. There is more pushback on this vocation for women than any other, yet- and this is really sexist, it’s applauded if men are homemakers. Tell me again how this world isn’t trying to separate women from our children. “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” They do not want that hand to be the hand of mothers. They use guilt, shame, depreciation, mockery, whatever they can to obliterate our value and push us to get a job.
I fell for it. For years, I fell for it.
In part, I spent most of my youth never wanting children. I saw how invisible homemakers were. I saw that a mother becomes a mother and a wife and loses her is-ness, her identity. I saw growing up, (a long, long time ago) how men often took this role for granted. The men that had stay at home mothers for wives didn’t appreciate it. They got so caught up in making money they often never came home and kissed their wives. They cheated. They tried to have it both ways, sleeping with someone “more exciting” at work while enjoying the fruits of her labor at dinner time. I understand the feminist movement, to achieve freedom from those men, but also, to establish innate value where, for women, there hasn’t been value in any capacity at any time in history. But feminism didn’t bring happiness, not really. Go talk to feminist activists, and in your life, you never talked to a more unhappy, sad, victimized lot. Feminism never established the value for women in society as homemakers and fulfilling one of our often claimed “most noble vocations”: to literally be shit on by infants day in and day out thanklessly. Now that women can work, it’s pretty much established by the world that she should be working.
I’ll say it again. I fell for it.
But because I was attempting to bring the same value to my children and work, I ended up watching both suffer. This work-life-balance of the working mother is a myth. Something must give. If you devote yourself to work, your kids get lost in video games and screens, your husband never has any clean socks or time to get his A+ certification. And while spinning around in circles trying to do both, you never make enough money to make up for what it costs, surely not enough to hire yourself a replacement. Acquiring fruitless side hustle one after another that always cost too much.
This year, I finally came to my senses. I can still write a blog. I can still work on my book. But, I have to prioritize homemaking, and I need to do it so well that no one can deny the value of my efforts. Even in my mom-trepreneurial group, I shared my vocation on my annual January vision board. I’m prioritizing being a homemaker. I said it. It was my step in the right direction for me. I felt the righteousness of it immediately.
What did that look like?
It looked like making lists of things to do with the kids, things to do around the house. It looked like making strategic game plans to make my house a home, and then, to even schedule myself living in it. For example, after finishing tasks all week to make and maintain a nice house and well educated kids, I woke up Saturday. It was raining. I opened the sliding glass door off my master bedroom to let in the sound of the rain and the river. Then, I crawled back in bed and spent the entire morning there reading a book. That is my dream Saturday. But, it’s something that I literally never, ever do. Why? Because I was always feeling guilty about all the shit around the house I never got done.
Then, the coincidences started to come. To me, I believe coincidences are God’s way of winking and nudging us when we are going in the right direction. I opened a bottle of my favorite kombucha and noticed a little face of a sloth in the lid with some cheesy quote. I got to thinking about how sloth has become such a cultural icon of our age. He’s in popular cartoons. He’s everywhere right now. Yet, the Bible lists him or his character at least as a deadly sin. I started to think of all the things I should do. I’m not “shoulding” on myself here. I’m talking about moral imperatives, vocations (true spiritual callings) and everything else we try to avoid, *I* try to avoid. My friend, Starr O’ Hara did a little podcast blog about the energy it takes to avoid what we are called to do. She said “laziness in not restful.” You can watch the rest of that podcast here. Point being, her words are finally starting to be integrated from my conscious understanding to my felt experience only about 9 months after she said them. Perfect gestation!
It comes down to this: sloth is exhausted because slothenliness is exhausting.
As an example, I might watch a TV show or play a video game to unwind from all that searching for the mythical work-life-balance, and as a result, I don’t end up feeling fulfilled or rested. Rather, I end up sleepless and fried doing all these things to destress from the fatigue after running away from my inner callings.
The larger point being, it really hit me recently how much sloth and laziness has made itself such an iconic part or our modern society. It’s a death cycle. It’s literally killing us physically by absorbing our power to get out of debt, to be more for our families, to devote us to what matters in our lives. Attempting to live in true freedom is impossible if we are all absorbed in useless, selfish undertakings. Who would not fight for Freedom, is but a slave. It’s truer today than in any point in history. No one seems to have any fight left for the good things.
I am pondering all these thought lately.
So, as I am cleaning house, making lists, and whatnot, tonight, I pick up my book that I have been reading on the weekends. M. Scott Peck, M.D. writes in his book People Of The Lie of the concept of evil. The passage I read in the midst of all these thoughts on slothenliness says,
“In The Road Less Traveled I suggested the most basic sin is laziness.”
Further, he quotes Gerald Vann from The Pain of Christ and the Sorrow of God saying,
“…that sloth which is boredom with divine things, the inertia that cannot be troubled to repent, even though it sees the abyss into which the soul is falling, because for so long, in little ways perhaps, it has accustomed itself to refuse whatever might cost it an effort. May God in his mercy save us from that.”
I think I can look at my own identification with sloth now and with pride and with other sins that drove me from peace, because, by listening to my vocation, taking it to task, and by practicing some austerity in it, I am able to appreciate lying in bed reading a book on a Saturday without guilt or shame or general anxiety. I can rest without being lazy. It’s easier to see what is or was sinful (take that however you need to in order to utilize it for growth) in ourselves from a distance, be it space or time.
As a culture, I can see that my experience is merely a fragment of a whole culture mired in the “deadly sins.” While I am prioritizing my family, I can still do something about the culture to an extent, not just as a model, for I can fail at that, too. I want to offer the opportunity to release the identification with deadly sloth by practicing one’s vocation actively. I’m talking specifically about your vocation, really, if I can help.
I am offering, starting on February 5th, Monday morning, the first of a weekly series of Zoom calls Monday through Friday from 10am MST to 2pm MST to start scheduling a life that aligns with your vocation, even or rather, especially if it feels elusive or drives you to avoidance for some reason or another. We don’t have to get into all that. Perhaps, in the course of a call, you may feel compelled to journal for yourself about all those inner workings. Ultimately, use the time to find allies working in vocation, whatever your calling may be, and to be accountable to one another for making the action steps that deliver you from evil, so to speak. You can bring your attention to heel. I’m calling the workgroup “Accountability in Action”. I hope you will join me Monday morning, or drop in any morning this week.
It’s time to kick the deadly sloth!
Here’s the catch!
The Accountability In Action group will only be available to my Premium Substack subscribers. We’re talking about a less than $10 per month investment to alleviate yourself from whatever has been holding you back. You show up, you put in the time, you make the effort. We will be there to make the time pass more quickly, to offer suggestions to optimize your action, and to cheer you on when the rest of the world may not acknowledge your dream or vocation.
Try it for a month, and if it’s not for you, cancel your premium subscription at any time through Substack. I am looking forward to seeing you!