Bad Habits

The season of Lent draws to a close, and it’s been a pretty slack one on my part. Since I was raised an Episcopalian, and I pretty much believe in God these days, I figure I’m supposed to do the Lent things–give up something that I love but that’s bad for me, take on some kind of prayer routine, try to purify myself body and soul for the celebration of that strange and compelling and credibility-stretching event that is the resurrection. And I’ve been truly sucking. I managed to come up with something that would be actually good for me to give up (since giving up fattening/sugary foods doesn’t make me holier, just grumpier), namely, unnecessary spending. Then I decided that enjoying my time with loved one over food and delicious beverages was absolutely necessary, and well, the momentum has just run out on that one.

But I did have a bit of a Lenten epiphany, albeit a last-minute and a slow one, and it all came from my visit to the dentist.

I have terrible teeth. Terrible. Comes from poor/nonexistent brushing habits as a child and a 5-cup a day habit of tea with milk and sugar. I know that the tea is a bad habit, but I justify it to myself by saying, well, it’s my only real vice (I don’t smoke or get plastered or do pot) and I lead a stressful life and I need it to stay awake during the day and it’s even kind of classy, right, I mean, hey, tea is so British. And I keep on sucking it down, cup after soothing cup of black tea (Ceylon and Earl Grey or Chai if I’m at Starbucks), with an ideal mix of roughly two teaspoonfuls of sugar per eight ounces. And I don’t give myself a hard time about it, for the reasons described above.

But the dentist does not understand that tea is British and that I am a virtuous person otherwise. What he understands is that my teeth are decaying. (I’m not even going to name the number of cavities because I’m embarrassed. Suffice it to say that they will require more than one visit.) And, in the most charming way possible, he has given me an ultimatum: no more sugary drinks. Ever. Period. No excuses.

As I try to adjust to life without sugar, I find myself thinking about my other bad habits. I spend more money than I can afford in an effort to convince myself I’m not as poor as I know myself to be. (Yeesh, that’s a scary one.) I never ever do the dishes. I rarely clean my apartment, period. I ignore work that I don’t want to do in the hope that it will go away. I waste time on the internet when I’m at work. I don’t take care of myself, physically or mentally. I never ever learn my Coptic/Hebrew/Greek vocabulary. I say that I’m too busy to do things that I just haven’t bothered to do yet. I somehow, despite all of this, manage to feed my already-overlarge ego by feeling superior to other people. I look at myself in mirrors as I walk by. I go to bed an hour later and leave the house 15 minutes later than I intend to…every single day. I feel sorry for myself. I bite my nails. I drink too much tea.

Maybe I should work on these. The spending diet helped, and I think I’m going to try to implement a modified version for the rest of the year (while allowing myself to buy things that I need, just not right away). I don’t bite my nails as much any more; ever since the dentist fixed my chipped front tooth, I can’t get a really good hold any more. Training for the 10k is helping, too, though I have allowed myself to get behind with that. I have actually kept 2 to 3 days ahead all week (though, granted, it’s the first week of the trimester). But that leaves a lot still to work on.

On the other hand, I found that giving up sugared tea–which, as anyone who knows me can attest, is almost unthinkable for me–has been easier than I expected once the stakes got high enough. And if I can give up sugar in my tea…either I’m a lot stronger than I thought I was, or there really is such a thing as divine grace. Or perhaps both.

All Good Gifts

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

What I like about this poem is the last line, its simplicity, its freshness. The last word– “wait”– jars you, because you have to search back to three lines before for the rhyme. When you first hear it it seems as though it’s coming out of nowhere, and then you think, “Oh, right. State/wait. Now I get it.” There’s a little click that happens in your head as the poem feels “right” again.

In the same way, that line’s calm, inexorable message–”They also serve who only stand and wait”–brings a life back into balance. Milton wrote this poem (we conjecture) when he was 42 and going blind.* From the time he was a teenager at university, he had known himself to have an extraordinary capacity for poetry, and he planned to write a great verse epic, following the model of Homer and Vergil but with a distinctly English theme, perhaps focusing on a great king and warrior such as King Arthur. He knew that he could be the greatest poet of the English language.

And then he began to lose his sight.

Milton does not generally stoop to hyperbole (at least, not in my memory), and so the line, “And that one talent which is death to hide” stands out all the more–you almost think that he means it literally. The frustration, the anger of feeling as though God has given you gifts which God both expects you to use and is at the same time keeping you from using, the agony of watching the best part of yourself go to waste–they practically drip off the page, all the more awful because they come from the carefully chosen, measured, lucid voice of a middle-aged scholar. Milton never loses control, but that does not lessen his despair or his fear that he will fail God as he fails to develop his gifts.

And then–

“God doth not need / Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best / Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.” Milton finds that he has mistaken his essential mission. The best part of himself is not his creative genius, no matter how mighty it may be; it is his willingness to do his best with everything that has been given to him, not just the parts he is proud of.

“They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Click.

*Of course, 42 would have been on the far side, not the near side, of middle age at that time, creating one of the perennial scholarly problems of the poem. Why would he say that his light is spent “ere half my days” then? Is he writing about a figurative blindness, or writer’s block? Is he changing his age to heighten the pathos of the poem (not likely, to my mind–given how personal it feels, I don’t think he’s that interested in creating an elaborate poetic alter ego)? Or does he just assume he’ll live to be 85?