I was thinking about how people can change. Some for the better, others for the worse. Then I realized, no one sets out to “change for the worse.” It’s an accident. A very long-term accident.
There are things called “Deadly Sins.” And yeah, they do steal your soul, so to speak. But it’s not the “sin,” per se, it’s what causes all of them to be “sins.” And that is simply complacency. No (objective) person thinks that indulging in a little pleasure will do any harm. A little “spoiling,” a little “excess,” can actually really help rejuvenate us. It’s when this indulgence becomes our focus which causes pleasure to become “guilty.” Our personal source of desirable misery.
Pleasure is powerful, but it has no ability to steal anything from us. We willingly give over to it, relinquishing our self control. We lose our vision and we lose our purpose when we regularly over indulge in pleasure. But when we begin exercising self control and demonstrating our willpower these guilty pleasures must give over to us. Slowly, their frequency in our lives will diminish, making them much less “guilty” and more “simple.” And the really damaging ones will eventually leave our worlds entirely, because we will gain perspective on their control over us. So instead of being enslaved to the constant pursuit of pleasure, we should take back the willpower to create our own lives with intention.
This is the intention of “change for the better.” It’s also what we call “improvement.”
