My favorite sin

The destructive seduction that is American middle-class despair .. and what pulls me out

I realized something was wrong last week when I was dreading my Monday, from beginning to end. Something was wrong because my Monday involved showing up at my son’s first grade class, taking him to lunch at the grocery store, picking out a birthday treat, bringing it back to his class, reading a story to them, and watching them enjoy the treat.

I had a bunch of writing and church work to do as well, because Mondays are my busiest work-from-home days — but that wasn’t all that was bothering me.

Instead, I was ticking off my list of things to do as though each one was equally draining: a laundry list of, literally, loads of laundry, house-cleaning, sermon-writing, email responses, reading and research, parent taxicab to-and-from piano lessons, and the aforementioned lunch and reading with first graders.

I am one of those people who truly loves little kids. There is nothing like watching their faces light up as you share a joke, or that mischievous twinkle dance in their eyes when you give them permission to express their natural exuberance.

Kids make me really happy. Especially my own. Even when they drive me crazy, too.

So when I realized I was approaching Monday as just another long list of arduous tasks, I had to take a step back and ask myself what was going on inside.

Fall has been busy. We started September with 3/4 family members contracting COVID. It has taken awhile to get healthy again. My new book launched Aug. 16, and since early September I’ve been investing heavily into writing for this Substack, as well as exploring other writing opportunities. I’ve also been recording podcasts and speaking intermittently for churches and other groups.

I tend to describe my general approach to life in terms of my former high school track career. I started out running the 100, 200 and 400; I ended my senior year doing the 4x100, long jump, triple jump, and high jump. Needless to say, I wasn’t a good distance athlete. I preferred to go all out in the sprints and jumps, leaving nothing in reserve, refusing to pace myself, only to end the race panting, which is what I did the first - and maybe only - time my coach convinced me to run the 400.

In track, if you refuse to pace yourself, you can maybe get by with appealing for mercy to the jumping coach and lounging on the mat behind the high jump in the comfortable June Midwestern sun.

In life, if you refuse to pace yourself, you end up burnt out and frustrated and exhausted.

For me, this cycle sometimes becomes a pattern, and it ends in a particular spot: the sin St. Thomas Aquinas called the gravest of all: despair.

***

Even from a young age, I’ve been seduced at least by the idea of despair. I’ve always been drawn to sad movies, sad books, gritty documentaries, tales of woe, songs that sing of heartbreak and/or bleak devastation.

I’ve always thought of sadness as a more “real” emotion than happiness, because happiness seems fleeting and fake: like a helium-filled balloon floating toward the sky and a string that slips through your fingers.

Moments of awe and joy seem to flow like water: they’re slippery, and I can’t hold on to them.

Sadness - or despair - in contrast, invites slowing down and wallowing. You can, I know from experience, still do all the things you’re supposed to do, while wallowing in despair, but you cannot enjoy any of them. And if you do enjoy them, just a bit, you can’t let that feeling last. You can be pleasant on the outside and internally scornful.

When I get like this, it often begins in the morning, when I wake up and calculate the amount of time until I can potentially lie here again in bed, watching some depressing reality show or another; listening to old episodes of sad podcasts and songs.

Raised in a middle-class austere Minnesotan family, despair is maybe the one indulgence I felt allowed to endure. And make no mistake, despair is indulgent. You can almost luxuriate in it, snapping back at anyone who seems too happy, but only doing this with those closest to you, those you love the most.

Gross, right?

As Kenny Chesney warbles, It’s always your favorite sins … that do you in.”

Despair is a predictable response to the world we live in today, where we have lots of buying power (mostly on credit) but little real control. Any second, we could be blown up by a drone or a nuclear bomb. Someone could shoot us indiscriminately with a legal automatic weapon and ammunition purchased at Wal-Mart. We can knock asteroids off-course in outer space but not feed the world’s children or agree on common facts of American history.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how sometimes we are encouraged to choose denial, and it seems that for those of us who reject denial, we assume despair is the only logical alternative. What other response is there?

As I ask myself this question, I’m reminded of my 7-year-old son’s shining eyes in the back corner of the neighborhood Starbucks, where we brought the lunch we purchased at the grocery store: for him, fried flounder, mashed potatoes, corn, gravy, and strawberry milk. I put aside my work and the depressing world news headlines, and I looked him in the eye over my paper cup of ham and wild rice soup.

“I just can’t stop smiling to eat,” he said.

My God, he was so happy. And every bit of his happiness was real. Not feigned. Not pretend. It was every single bit as valid as the sadness and despair I’d allowed myself to wallow in for days then, a predictable but irrational response to pushing myself too hard, to not allowing a second of recovery or respite.

He was happy. So was I, I realized, in spite of everything. We finished our simple lunch, and then we went back to the grocery store and purchased 24 frosted pumpkin cookies for his class and teacher. I drove him back, and I walked into the classroom, and as the kids and the teacher came back they had chapped cheeks and lips from outdoor recess. They were smiling in the cold, stamping their feet and removing their jackets.

“You’re back!” they said to my son, delightedly.

They all found spots on the carpet and stared up at me with expectant eyes while I read a book from Dr. Seuss. Last week I’d lost nearly a full night’s sleep equivocating about the crisis in our public schools and teachers quitting and the lack of available substitutes and families leaving en masse for private schools, but now I saw the kids in front of me who were still here. They were quiet and joyful. They grinned widely at the funny parts. The world of Dr. Seuss and the world of school was still a place capable of delight and wonder and joy and friendship and learning. Despair was not the only possible response in this elementary world, and neither was it the response I was going to choose anymore, either. At least not for-ever.

We passed out the cookies, and my son gave me a sheepish hug goodbye, and I walked back into my car and drove home to make progress on the mountain of work ahead of me, until it was time to pick up my older son from his school. The daily tasks continued. The floor was filthy. Bills needed to be paid. Dishes washed. Russia was bombing apartment buildings and schools again in Kyiv. Truth was nowhere to be found in popular American media and discourse. Lies sell. Privilege rules.

Still, I would not succumb to despair. For my own sake. For the sake of those little eyes staring up into mine, begging for a future filled with hope.

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