To start, I hope you feel loved today.
After watching the movie “Shazam!” last night, I’ve decided to study the seven deadly sins today. (Real quick) If you’ve havent seen the movie, basically theres a bad guy with monster buddies who all represent one of the sins. I found a wonderfully worded (so much so that i couldn’t help but use its wording directly at times) YouTube video on the topic of the 7 deadly sins, and below is my interpretation of the ideas it talked about. I don’t claim to be a preacher even if I get that way unintentionally. But my hope in writing this was to help my personal comprehension of the ideas I ran into.
In online life and in our social life, we sometimes berate others (often unknowingly) when we observe these human behaviors believing what we are doing is for the greater good. However, if we were to just form better understanding of these behaviors, it would be more productive for all of us. At least that’s what I learned from the YouTube video haha
Pride: Sometimes, as humans, we become boastful and we speak of our greatness.. but this is only because we feel invisible. And speaking amazing things about ourselves is our natural reaction to that feeling of invisibility. So telling someone “I see you” is a wonderful thing to say to them. Those that exhibit a need to boast of their how amazing they are just need a little encouragement. So they can grow closer to a genuine feeling of self-worth, and diminish the need to boast of their greatness.
Envy: Sometimes we want what other people have but that’s okay. It’s natural. Rather than condemn someone for expressing these wants, we should understand that this person has not yet realized that it IS ENOUGH TO JUST BE, or maybe just forgot momentarily. Either way, isn't it easy to tell someone to be grateful for what they have?, even though I’m guilty of envious thoughts too. Easier said than done sort of thing. And gratitude while a magically beautiful thing, doesn’t mean envy is equally as ugly. Envy, when carefully analyzed can actually be a healthy source of ambition. It can be a means for us to identify what’s truly missing in our lives. And often times what’s missing is simply love. For example, think of someone who envies another persons material possessions, a pretty common source of envy. Now consider two people in love, they feel accepted, they feel they have the right to exist. There is tenderness and patience that binds them, and they could be happy with nothing more than a park bench. No material wealth or possessions needed. (Well maybe a few, but you get the idea)
Greed (this was a tough one to interpret): Among us are people who excessively hoard material wealth. They desire to grab as much stuff as fast as possible. They may appearrr to be advantaged and privileged, but the urge to acquire more than our fair share, inside, is a manifestation of desperation and fear. It could just be a fear that someone is gonna notice they are unhappy.. and that drives them to grab more and more stuff, almost as a form of distracting others. Like “I’m not unhappy. Look at all this stuff I have, how could I be unhappy?”
Lust: We may sleep around at some point in our lives, not because we are bad people.. but because we are lonely. Sex is the epitome of connection and acceptance. When we do have sex, we should eventually communicate with the other what it is we truly desire from sex.. and for most of us that is an acceptance of our chaotic human selves.
Sloth: We don’t become lazy out of malice. But out of fear that our work will be a source of awful humiliation. We are scared that if we apply ourselves we may not succeed as well as we’d like. Or worse, we will get mocked and humiliated for doing an inadequate job. But this isn’t laziness, rather COMPLETELY understandable worries. Beneath our inaction is the anticipation of catastrophe. We must first overcome the fear of doing something badly.. in order to shift into action.
Wrath: Let’s use road rage as an easily relatable example. At some point, especially in densely populated places.. we experience a moment where we become angry at another driver. But only because in that moment we were scared for our lives. Now we may not be afraid for our life per say in every situation we become angry.. but it’s a pretty frequent trend, that we are scared of something. Take a random, almost silly example of a baseball player getting mad at an umpire in a baseball game. Say a pitch was called a strike by the umpire but the player believed the pitch was a ball. The player may get angry.. but is actually just scared that that pitch which was incorrectly called, could result in an unpleasant event like a strikeout. To go further, maybe the player is afraid of letting his teammates down. Maybe not with this example, but in many situations, it would be good for us to communicate with an “I’m afraid…” statement when we are angry. Or if someone you know is angry, you can say “You must be scared…” Now these may not apply to everything. I mean if you drop the food you just cooked on the ground.. you could just be mad because you dropped your food on the ground lol
Gluttony: We eat and eat and eat to excess, but not to fill a void of food, but to fill a void of love. We truly seek love and acceptance but we are not sure how to find it. We do not need to be told to eat less, eat healthier, or be disciplined in a diet, as many trainers and diet gurus will tell us. What we really need is to be gently guided to different sources of kindness, security, and emotional connection. What we are really hungry for is love.
As a human, I’m not protected from any of these sins and never will be, but I feel better having a deeper understanding of them.
In conclusion, I hope you feel loved today.
Love,
Billy
The video that inspired this post: