Monday, May 21, 2012

Living with Enthusiasm!

Sloth.  It's a funny word.  Ssslllooooth.  Just pronouncing it imbues one with a dopey feeling.  It sounds lazy.

On a new website I've been introduced to (kyria.com), I recently read an article about sloth.  It's one of the seven deadly sins, you know.  "The avoidance of physical or spiritual work."  Think couch potato.  Yeah, I'm slothful. 

What I found most intriguing about this article, however, was the quality it named as sloth's opposite: enthusiasm!  Not busy-ness: the author notes that many people use busy-ness as an excuse to avoid the work they really need to be doing.  It becomes just a tool to enable one's sloth.  Ouch.

But enthusiasm -- that's what whips sloth's sorry little bootie!  Get excited about something and it's impossible to avoid the work involved because the work becomes a joy!

This point stuck because it occurred to me that, in general, I don't often get enthusiastic about much anymore.  Yes, that's sad, I know.  It's a condition that has developed over the years, and I think I've always attributed it to my sleep problems and the resulting lethargy.  But I suspect now that I may have been mistaken in that assumption.  I suspect it may be a self-protection thing.  You get excited about something . . . you're disappointed . . . and so you stop getting excited to avoid the inevitable let-downs.  Better to be pleasantly surprised than disappointed again.

But I don't think I'm supposed to live that way.  It leads to sloth -- which, again, is one of the seven deadly sins, people!  Deadly, I believe, because it sucks the joy out of life, and a life without joy is not worth living.  Better to live life with enthusiasm, even if it means the dashing of dreams sometimes.  You probably already knew that.  I needed a reminder.

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