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07 December 2024
I recently finished two years of not reading and writing philosophy. [This was drafted three days after the end of the break, in late October 2024.] But I made exceptions sometimes, yet still abstained more than normal.
Lent lasts six weeks. You can sprint through Lent if you want, like running 100 meters. Gut it out. But if six weeks is 100 meters, six weeks times 16 (1600 meters, a mile) is 96 weeks, about two years. It takes a different kind of mindset to get through two years of abstinence, analogous to the pacing of a mile race versus a 100m race.
Some people might benefit more from one two-year abstinence, as opposed to yearly six-week abstinences.
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One thing I've found as I get back into reading is that my mind is stiff. It doesn't want to focus on philosophy. But if I read more, it warms up.
I wonder if this is caused in part by age. I'm 37, which could be early middle age. Sometimes people turn away from the intellectual with age (and thus turn from the global and the ultimate, since we can only see the global and ultimate noetically). Yet, middle aged people exercise physically, despite their stiffness. Perhaps what is required to be an aletheist when your brain has aged is a commitment to seeking the truth as strong as, or stronger than, what you had when you were young, the discipline to continue thinking big.