Episode Transcript  

One

Appreciation

Were you one of those kids who, every Halloween, would go out and get a ton of candy and then eat themselves sick that same night? Like maybe you got really excited about the candy corn, and then you just started pounding candy corn. And then you felt totally nasty. And that happens with all junk food. You get excited beforehand, and then maybe the first couple of bites are a rush. And then before you know it, you can’t even really taste it. You’re just eating the candy corn or the third piece of cake, or the last spoonfuls of your huge ice cream sundae. You’re not really eating it because it’s filling you with pleasure. On the contrary, you’re feeling more and more sluggish, not more excited.

You’re eating this thing, eating too much of it just because it’s there. And then, as we said, you feel kind of nasty afterwards. Well, all our senses function like that at some level. They were all given to us to delight in the good things of this material world. And they start out really sensitive. And then, as we overindulge, they get duller and duller. And our pleasure decreases and decreases, and we actually begin to feel polluted. 

And, tragically, this is how more and more of us are spending our free time. Polluting ourselves by overindulging the senses. It’s making us miserable, and we have to figure out a way to stop. 

Two

Why Overstimulation Kills Appreciation

God gave us our senses for the same reason He gave us everything else: to be happy. Our senses exist to appreciate the world around us, to delight in the beauty of things, and to bring our minds the material on which to contemplate the goodness of God and all He has done.

Again, our senses are made to appreciate the material world. But the only way you can appreciate something is by noticing it. And overindulgence kills noticing, which is why overindulgence kills appreciation.

When we overindulge, we get used to something. We begin to be bored with it, take it for granted. Just like when you eat too much ice cream, by the end, you start eating it automatically without really noticing or appreciating it at all. 

Overindulgence is the death of appreciation. And we don’t just do it with our sense of taste. More and more, we are horribly indulging our senses of sight and of hearing. And that indulgence is robbing us of all our joy.

Three

The Overstimulation of Sight and Sound

Sight and sound are the two most noble senses we have. They have an incredible impact on the mind and the passions. Sight is the sense most closely connected to understanding. When we really get a picture in our minds, that’s what helps us hang on to an idea. And, in fact, visual images are the most long-lasting. If you see something perverse, or sick, or twisted, it takes a long time, maybe never, to get out of your head.

Hearing is the sense most closely connected to feeling. That’s why music can move you to tears, anger, or cheerfulness faster than any other art form. That means if you’re letting in a lot of crazy visual images every day, and you’re listening to all kinds of music and voices and just noise of different kinds, if you’re doing that, several things are happening to you.

By letting in all kinds of images, you’re messing around with your capacity to think clearly. By letting in all kinds of sounds, you’re pulling your feelings in all kinds of directions and so encouraging emotional instability. By overindulging your sense of sight and your sense of sound, you’re making them less and less capable of noticing, and therefore appreciating and delighting in the goodness of the world. 

That’s no way to live.

Four

Looking at Stillness

Most of our free time today is spent overindulging the senses of sight and sound. And that’s why our free time is probably, on the whole, making us more depressed and stressed-out instead of more calm and joyful. So what should you do?

Easy. Spend more and more of your free time de-stimulating the senses. In practice, that means two things. First, look at stillness. 

The screens we look at are constantly changing, either because we’re watching video after video, or because we’re scrolling endlessly and jumping from link to link. So to rest your eyes, and reconquer your power of noticing, do this instead: look at stillness. Sit outside in nature and look at the trees, the grass, the sky. Let the stillness God put into the world wash over you. Sit on your couch, and look around your house when it’s quiet and still, and meditate on the blessings that your house and its memories represent.

Most importantly, pray every day in front of a beautiful sacred image of Our Lord, or Our Lady, or the Blessed Trinity. And appreciate how beautiful our God is, and how wonderful all His works.

Five

Listen to Silence

The other key thing to do with our free time is to listen to silence. And actually, the amazing thing is, you never really hear silence. What you hear is the sound you’ve forgotten how to notice. If you’re out in the city, the sounds come at you fast and furious, cars and people and the sounds of buses and trains and dogs barking and music playing. If you’re out in nature, there are birds and bugs, and you won’t believe how loud the wind is through the trees.

If you’re in your own home, the sound of the clock ticking and the AC and the heat and the dishwasher and the fridge, the sounds of all your comforts, all the ways God has provided for you and made you secure, not to mention the voices of the people you love.

How can we not appreciate those sounds? Listening, noticing, training ourselves to pay attention. This is how we return to a sense of delight. This is how we overcome boredom and come back to gratitude. This is how we prepare ourselves to hear the voice of God.

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