The best feeling in the world is “done.”
That’s something my children have heard from me, over and over again, from the time they were old enough to clean up their rooms or have homework. It’s something I would say in hopes of getting them to stop procrastinating, stop trying to figure out how to do the thing perfectly, stop coming up with reasons they could not do the thing right now and just, you know, do the thing.
Or at least start (see: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”). As a pro tip, you can add all the in-between steps to doing the thing separately to your to-do list, and cross them off one by one, thus giving your brain a stream of small dopamine hits to encourage yourself to keep going and finish the thing.
Which, once again, is the best feeling in the world, because that big, hairy thing that’s been hanging over your head is no longer there.
This might be why I became a journalist; it’s an endless succession of short projects. So many things to finish.
Which makes the spiritual life, with its call to ongoing conversion and its ongoing synodal journey and all of the other work we are supposed to be doing throughout out entire lives, a bit of a challenge.
When can we let our guard down? When can we rest?
This, I think, is the wisdom of Lent. And Advent, another limited season of anticipation. Both are a good length for a project, long enough to be challenging and make us pay attention to what we’re supposed to be doing, but not endless.
Lent challenges us to pay attention to prayer, to almsgiving, to fasting, to repentance for what we know are our failures when it comes to loving God and the people around us. It’s not really a self-improvement project; if you give up sweets in order to lose weight, you’ve missed the point. Sure, give up sweets if you want, but use the struggle to remind yourself of what your priorities should be, not to make your clothes fit better.
And then, at the end of Lent, we get Easter, the celebration of Jesus’ triumph over death and of our very salvation. A feeling of accomplishment indeed.
If we move through the Easter season and into Ordinary Time still spending more time in prayer, still taking the need to give alms more seriously, still prioritizing our relationships with God and neighbors, so much the better.
But as we approach the Easter season this year, we can also take time to celebrate, to relax a little, to appreciate where we are and where we’ve been. That will help us get ready to do it again.