For as soon as their preoccupations fail them, they are restless with nothing to do, not knowing how to dispose of their leisure or make the time pass. And so they are anxious for something else to do, and all the intervening time is wearisome: really, it is just as when a gladiatorial show has been announced, or they are looking forward to the appointed time of some other exhibition or amusement — they want to leap over the days in between. Any deferment of the longed-for event is tedious to them. Yet the time of the actual enjoyment is short and swift, and made much shorter through their own fault. For they dash from one pleasure to another and cannot stay steady in one desire.
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They lose the day in waiting for the night, and the night in fearing the dawn.
Even their pleasures are uneasy and made anxious by various fears, and at the very height of their rejoicing the worrying thought steals over them: ‘How long will this last?’ This feeling has caused kings to bewail their power, and they were not so much delighted by the greatness of their fortune as terrified by the thought of its inevitable end.
—Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It
Category: DESPONDENCY
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They make one journey after another and change spectacle for spectacle. As Lucretius says, ‘Thus each man ever flees himself.’ But to what end, if he does not escape himself? He pursues and dogs himself as his own most tedious companion. And so we must realize that our difficulty is not the fault of the places but of ourselves. We are weak in enduring anything, and cannot put up with toil or pleasure or ourselves or anything for long. This weakness has driven some men to their deaths; because by frequently changing their aims they kept falling back on the same things and had left themselves no room for novelty. They began to be sick of life and the world itself, and out of their enervating self-indulgence arose the feeling ‘How long must I face the same things?’
—Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It
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When we feel down or anxious, our aptitude for self-control is diminished, making us more prone to making bad decisions. Sadness, it seems, leads to more impatient thoughts, and a desire for immediate reward at the expense of greater future gains.
How to fake a shopping buzz without spending any money
Katie Beck -
They are all in the same category, both those who are afflicted with fickleness, boredom and a ceaseless change of purpose, and who always yearn for what they have left behind, and those who just yawn from apathy. There are those too who toss around like insomniacs, and keep changing their position until they find rest through sheer weariness. They keep altering the condition of their lives, and eventually stick to that one in which they are trapped not by weariness with further change but by old age which is too sluggish for novelty. There are those too who suffer not from moral steadfastness but from inertia, and so lack the fickleness to live as they wish, and just live as they have begun. In fact there are innumerable characteristics of the malady, but one effect – dissatisfaction with oneself. This arises from mental instability and from fearful unfulfilled desires, when men do not dare or do not achieve all they long for, and all they grasp at is hope: they are always unbalanced and fickle, and inevitable consequence of living in suspense.
—Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It
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At some point in my life, I began to think of the depression and anxiety much like a broken leg or a sore throat. We never say, “I am a broken leg, or I am a sore throat.” But when we are anxious or depressed we say, “I am depressed, I am anxious.” Strangely, it makes a difference. It is certainly the case that having a broken leg can interfere with any number of activities. It could cause enough pain that medication and rest would be required. Depression and anxiety are no different.
—Fr. Stephen Freeman, The Spiritual Life in Depression and Anxiety -
By directing its power toward destruction of this support on which the sinner’s selfishness has established itself and rests, divine, salvific grace carries out the following to awaken the sinner from his slumber: He who is enslaved by pleasing the flesh shall fall ill, and by weakening the flesh, shall give the spirit freedom and power to come to its senses and become sober. He who is preoccupied with his own attractiveness and strength shall be deprived of this attractiveness and kept in a state of utter exhaustion. He who finds refuge in his own power and strength shall be subject to slavery and humiliation. He who relies greatly on wealth shall have it taken from him. He who shows off great learnedness shall be put to shame. He who relies on solid personal connections shall have them cut off. He who counts on the permanence of the order established around him shall have it destroyed by the death of people he knows or the loss of essential material possessions. Is there any way to sober up those kept in the bonds of indifference through outward happiness other than by sorrows and grief? Isn’t our life filled with misfortunes so that it may assist with the divine intention of keeping us sober?
Each destruction of the supports of indifferent self-indulgence constitutes a turning point in life, which, because it is always unexpected, operates in an overwhelming and salvific manner. The sense that one’s life is in danger operates strongest of all in this respect. This sense weakens all bonds and kills selfishness at the very root; the person does not know where to run. The sense of total abandonment is of the same character and special circumstance. Both sense leave a person alone with himself. From himself, the most miserable of creatures, he immediately turns to God.
—St. Theophan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation: A Manual of Spiritual Transformation -
The divine grace that is everywhere-present and fills all things directly inspires the spirit of man, impressing thoughts and feelings upon it that turn it away from all finite things and toward another better, albeit invisible and mysterious world. The general characteristics of such arousals are dissatisfaction with oneself and everything pertaining to oneself, and anguish over something. The person is not satisfied by anything around him; not by his accomplishments or possessions, even if he has incalculable wealth; and he walks around as if heart-broken. Because he finds no consolation in visible things, he turns to the invisible, and receives it with a readiness to acquire it for himself sincerely and to give himself over to it.
—St. Theophan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation: A Manual of Spiritual Transformation
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“…he couldn’t understand why he was feeling happy and sad at the same time.”
Fantasies and other Extraordinary Illusions
Echoes In A Mystical Mind, Inspiration for the Intellectual -
We see here that Evagrius presents the person afflicted with acedia as a “run-away”, as a deserter who flees the spiritual battlefield. As a remedy for it he prescribes perseverance, which very often consists of remaining physically in one’s cell, whatever the cost, since physical stability is designed to support the stability of the heart.
The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times
Jean-Charles Nault -
We can classify here also the constant tendency to consider most attractive those pursuits that take one far from home or from one’s city. Here again we find the last daughter of acedia, instability, who thinks that by changing where one is, one can change who one is.
The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times
Jean-Charles Nault
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