The Sixth Hour

Take a person. A student, say, or a lover. They have something important in their lives, such as their homework, or their relationship. And yet they don't work on it. They might even avoid it. Often they might do things to distract themselves from thinking about it. When it comes time to work on it they suddenly find themselves "needing" to do things they'd previously been putting off, such as cleaning the house, or balancing their budget. Or they'll plan on working on it, but get on their computer, or start watching tv, and put it off until it is too late to work on it anymore. These behaviors are not planned, but completely predictable to anyone who knows them. They don't argue if told the homework or relationship is good, in fact they'd defend its goodness if asked. Yet they simply have no desire to do the thing they think is good.

We don't have a word for the cause of these behaviors. The closest we have is "depression," but depression is just a catch-all term that is more about the symptoms than it is about the condition itself. The medievals had a word for it, which was "acedia." Acedia is translated as "sloth," but that isn't accurate. Acedia is not a type of laziness, but a type of sadness. But sadness, in the sense of a feeling, isn't right either. It isn't about "feeling bad." Someone in a state of acedia might not feel anything at all.

Acedia is best understood not as a positive, but as a negative. It is a kind of loss. It is the loss of joy at what is good. The classic example was the monk who didn't want to pray. The point was not that he ought to pray, the point was that he ought to want to pray. Prayer is a great spiritual good, and we ought to desire what is good. So acedia is a sadness, meaning a lack of joy, in the face of what is good.

It's not just a lack of energy. A weak person might desire to play basketball, but only have the energy to do so for a few minutes before they need a break. But the person experiencing acedia doesn't want to play at all. They need a break not because they've had their fill, so to speak, but because they've run out of the ability to force themself to continue. A person can only eat so much cake. But to the person who doesn't desire brussel sprouts, any amount is too much. They can force themselves to eat them, but only to a point. They've never had "enough" like the person with the cake, rather they can have no more.

So what's the treatment? First one must address any impediments to the enjoyment of the good. Many times there is some hardship or pain associated with the good that prevents our enjoyment. These are too numerous to address specifically, suffice to say in these cases the acedia is addressed when the hardship is addressed.

Second one must truly decide if they truly think the thing they don't feel joy from is good. Many people only tell themselves something is good, but really have other reasons for wanting it that have little to do with the thing itself, such as the opinion of others. Often simply realizing what we had really wanted before is enough to let us view the thing for what it truly is, and love it or abandon it.

But let's assume it's good. The mistake people make is in trying to wait and be made to feel it is good. They expect a lightning bolt to strike them with inspiration. But this isn't right. What we want to encourage is love, and not just for a moment, but as a habit. Anyone can love anything at the right moment. But who wants to live simply waiting to be inspired? If then we want a habit then there are two things we need. Exposure, and practice.

Exposure, because if a thing is good, then the more we know a thing the more we love it. We have all had this experience, that of being near a place or a person and growing to love them. Or even growing to enjoy a food we didn't previously like from eating it over time. Even if we are resistant, if we acknowledge the resistance and decide it is mistaken then we can overcome it through exposure to what we've decided is good.

We practice acts of love, and thus encourage the habit of love. Some people resist this because they feel it is somehow fake. But this is nonsense. That's like saying it's fake to practice the guitar if you can't already play, or fake to lift weights if you aren't already strong. If in every other area of life we become a person who can do a thing by practicing that thing then why would that not apply to love? Why would the principles that apply in training, such as the principle of specificity, or the principle of progressive overload, not apply to our soul? The reason those apply to the body is because it's living, not because it's a body. Well our soul too is living. It adapts, just as the body does. So then train it like you would your body, one day at a time, a little at first, increasing over time, regulating workload to what you can handle, and defining the training by what is closest to the goal. Why not keep a training log, if you find that helpful? If you're still worried that all this sounds fake, then put yourself in another's shoes. Imagine you were the person who someone felt acedia about. Imagine you discovered they felt that way, and that you discovered that to treat it they developed such a plan, and worked on it every day, even if they could only do a tiny amount at first, and that they tracked their progress, and made note of what worked and what didn't. If you discovered all that, would you think they didn't love you? On the contrary, what greater act of love could there be than if someone did all that in order to love you more?