Final Thoughts on Monkery

I embarked on this experiment intending to disengage from the busyness of everyday life, but I quickly found that this would not be an easy goal to attain. I found myself burdened by obligations and other things that "had to be done." It was because of this that I had to change my experiment to only two meditations instead of three, and even after I changed the experiment I still found it quite difficult to even do the two! Apparently carving out two to three hours a day to spend in meditation and prayer is an impossible task these days.

It doesn't surprise me though that the experiment turned out this way, sadly. We live in a world that is constantly striving to do more and more each day. To be more efficient. To accomplish more. To make the biggest impact possible in a lifetime. What is it that we are hoping to accomplish with all this striving? Regardless of how you answer this question I say that the only thing we ultimately accomplish is our own abolition. 

We embrace technology that lets us be connected to the entire world 24/7 in order to aid our striving, and this to our own downfall. We can be reached at a moments notice with things that demand our attention and problems that need to be solved. All this serves to do is to distract us from the main problem that needs to be "solved," ourselves. If you want to know why the world is full of problems you and I need to look no further than the mirror. 

I feel as though my personality does not fit in well with the world today. I love thinking and contemplating things and this is at odds with the striving, doing, and accomplishing prized in our world today. I am not saying that I wish to withdraw and have no obligations to society, but that I wish my personality had a place in today's world. Perhaps it does though and I just need to find it.

As I look over what I have written I realize some of it could be interpreted as ranting, and it is a rant to some extent. The overall point though is this: the fact that the contemplative life seems like it no longer has a place in society (and many churches these days) saddens me, because it is the contemplative life that I enjoy the most.