A Modest Goal

"You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say...'I now see that I spent most my life doing in neither what I ought nor what I liked.'" - C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters

Last summer, Mike and I decided to listen to a dramatized version of C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters. When I heard the last line of the above quote, it stopped me in my tracks. How often do I find myself doing "neither what I ought nor what I liked"?

As a stay at home mom, I have a lot of unstructured time on my hands. A great deal of it, of course, is spent in caring for the baby, one way or another. But what about the rest of it?

Mike and I recently visited New Harmony, Indiana. The town was built by the Harmonizers. They were a sort of cult who believed in separatism and the imminent return of Jesus. In the first year of settling the town, they cleared 2,000 acres and built 160 homes. That's a lot of hard work! Especially if they thought Jesus was going to return any day...

I imagine that the Harmonizers must have worked hard, harder than I can imagine, from morning to evening every day. My life does not require that kind of hard work. And to be honest, I'm not sure I could hack it if it did.

But what am I doing instead? If I don't have so many "oughts" as settlers clearing land to survive in the 1800s, I might as well pursue some "likes."

So, that's my goal. It may not be a very lofty goal, but I'm trying to use my time doing what I like if not what I ought.