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Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?

Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

Welcome back, my friends, to the land of remedial introspection. At this point we’ve covered Gluttony and Avarice, two of the three Deadly Sins that I’ve come to consider siblings. That leads us to the third: Lust.

Now, you may be wondering why it is I treat these three as kin. I do so because, at their cores, they share a similar trouble. They are each disordered affections of want. Gluttony wants to only to consume, thinking nothing of value. Avarice seeks what it does not have in an effort to hoard, caring only for its value to oneself. Lust is the amalgamation of these – the desire for things it does not have, with the aim to use them up and move on. To that end, Lust does not tie itself to the strict bounds of sexuality like we tend to believe.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I think it’s good to repeat: attempting to pigeonhole the Deadly Sins to their stereotypes – Gluttony to food, Avarcie to wealth, and Lust to sex – allows us the ease of pretending we don’t suffer from these disorders. To think we’re better than other people who do. Another sin for another time.

It’s easy to see why that pigeonhole exists. Sex is the most obvious avatar of Lust’s particular desires. We see it in ourselves as easily as we see it in society; that deep, physical want that can stem out of nowhere. It’s powerful, unavoidable, and, perhaps hardest of all, natural. I suppose that last bit is true for all the Deadly Sins, and our persistent fight against them through discipline and wanting to overcome human nature is what makes a virtue a virtue.

As far as the how Lust pervades the world, well… I almost feel like this post is redundant. You live in the same world I do, and it’s almost impossible not to see it. “Sex sells” isn’t a slogan for nothing. We are tailored from an early age to lust for things, to treat others as disposable ends for our own benefit, to always be on the hunt for the next best thing and casting it aside as soon as the next one reveals itself. It’s safe to say we had a good decade or more geared toward lust for the next phone release. Always chasing that dopamine hit of the Next Best Thing.

Even the opposed Virtue is traditionally geared toward sex – Chastity. I know a lot of people see that word and roll their eyes. They see a high schooler with a promise ring or a moral scold, they envision a hypocrite and want desperately to see them pulled down off their high horse. It’s interesting to me that, while I mentioned last week that Avarice is one of the few sins our society has seemed to realize is a problem, Chastity is one of the Virtues that it seems to actively loathe. There could be a lot of reasons for this, and I don’t claim to be an expert, but I tend toward one of these two: either what I said above is good enough, people just hate hypocrites and Chastity is one of those things where it’s easier to prove, or two; our society is so steeped in Lust that people who truly practice Chastity stand out as freaks that actively stand apart. Could be a little bit of column A and column B, too.

Anyway, like the sins, the virtues aren’t specified toward one act. But what is Chastity without sex? It’s refraining from the hunt. It’s not being distracted by the grass on the other side of the fence or giving into temptation of the hunt.

Like every virtue, this isn’t cut and dry. This doesn’t mean you should never change, never pursue, never want. It’s understanding that all decisions must come with an eye toward the life you should be living. It is cutting the distractions so that the noise doesn’t affect those decisions.

For my own part, there were certainly points in my life where I was always after the next thing, but they were short lived and rather bland. I’ll admit I did find this article harder to put together simply because I have less of a problem with this than other things, though it isn’t because I’m steeped in any sort of virtue. I’m just cheap. Not exactly a shining beacon of excellence there, but I guess I’ll take the win where I can get it.

And so ends the first block. With the siblings out of the way, I’ll be moving on in order of my own interpretations of importance. Have a fantastic week, everyone, and be good to one another. Give contentedness a shot.