Everything that we consider normal, decent, or even happiness is empty of any spiritual meaning.
Our childhood, which is the root of our entire sum of perspectives that will govern our adult life, is, sometimes, imbued with faith or completely void of it.
By living through faith, one knows that waking up daily knowing you have to abide by a strict set of principles offers you a sense of pride and comfort that nothing else can match. The heaviest problem you will face will be convincing others to attempt such a lifestyle because, to them, thanks to the way modern life has been shaped, it may seem like doing a prison sentence. They see a life lived with purpose in such a light that they will speak so negatively about it every day.
Today, many consider that bringing children into faith from a young age will prevent them from developing “humanistic” attributes, like their tolerance towards different cultures will be lacking, that their worldview will be skewed, that a life lived under a set of limitations based upon spirituality will stunt their growth in all areas.
Since real faith (by which I mean a solid set of principles rooted in real life) equals discipline, we might tend to look at people who aren’t in the best situations as lazy or unwilling to change, but that is not true, they are just as disciplined as every successful person out there, it’s only that they are following a different scripture, the scripture of the new age god: the Media.
The “teachings” of Modernity (yes, capital M) are so strong that their prophets have no need for temples, churches, mosques, etc.
They come through music, movies, and shows, in such a fashion that you can’t spot the “preaching”.
If you look at it with a cold eye, you can spot how they even created holidays around it: sports finals, cinema blockbusters announced in advance, celebrities manipulated to convey messages without believing in them.
It may seem like bowing down to the New Age God is unavoidable.
The inherent optimism humans have begs to differ.
Thankfully, nowadays an old concept deeply rooted in religion came to life grace to the fad of the “self-development” content machine: delayed gratification.
Of course, we’ve heard stupid things like eating 5 slices of cake instead of 6 or watching 8 hours of television instead of 12 helps us be more productive and we feel the illusion of being accepted in a community built upon “healthy” principles, but the ones who took delayed gratification to heart came on the other end a changed person.
When we take the enthusiasm we use to feed our addictions with to the things which are universally accepted as holy, there will be no more pain.
