I grew up Presbyterian, so the practice of “giving up” something for Lent wasn’t really familiar to me. I remember being at girl scout camp when I was in elementary school, making homemade trail mix, hearing my friends being asked “what are you giving up,” and seeing them walk away without chocolate chips in the trail mix. I had no idea what that meant in the slightest.
All food anecdotes aside (now I really want some trail mix…) the concept of Lent was kind of lost on me. Even know, I know very little about Catholic and orthodox traditions, and it wasn’t until I asked someone this past week that I really understood why someone gives up a vice or luxury for Lent. I’ve never done it before, and with the season approaching I thought it might be a good idea. After my unofficial “research,” I figured out that giving something up is for both self-discipline and spiritual meditation. When I thought about what I would choose to give up, I didn’t really think it would be effective to do that with a food item or, heaven forbid, coffee. All that would probably do is make me bitter about the whole thing and probably fall off the wagon halfway through.
So I thought about it this way: what’s something I want to stop doing altogether? Something I should already be practicing restraint on? It wasn’t too long before I found that.
I’m a complainer, mostly on the internet. My twitter account has become a place to vent and be angry, but after all, there’s no privacy on the internet. I didn’t consider it to be a big deal until my mother called me out on something I said about a professor. After I got over my initial shock that she knows what twitter is, let alone read mine, I deleted the tweets and reconsidered just how much I post passive-agressive, immature things.
So I’m giving up negativity on the internet. I know that for some people that “doesn’t count” but I think it’s something I need to do. To learn to fuel my frustration and energy into something that won’t bite me in the butt later. My secondary goal is to post something positive and/or uplifting at least every other day, and we’ll have to see how it does. I’m not waiting for Ash Wednesday, this starts now.
