Our Duty to Improve (#144)

Episode 146: "The Pursuit of Happiness"

[00:00:00] Introduction

If you ache for truth, goodness, and beauty, If you're hungry for a Christianity with substance and strength, if you long for a faith that's big and bold and biblical and all about Jesus Christ, if you're inspired by the idea of one church that has spanned twenty centuries, twenty four time zones, and two hemispheres, enfolding every race, nation, and language, then you're considering Catholicism.

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Greg: Okay, Ed. Well... We took a break after our last conversation, which was grueling, about self improvement. And we, jogged several laps through the forest around the property here. And stopped and did vigorous calisthenics in the forest. I feel improved. Yeah, went over to the wood [00:01:00] area and chopped wood like, in Rocky, which was the Rocky where he was gonna fight the Russian guy. And so he goes out into the Siberian woods and he chops wood and stuff and lifts logs and stuff.

Ed: I'm trying to forget all of the Rocky movies except the first one. 

Greg: Oh, no. I like the Rocky movies. 

Ed: Except the one with the James Brown Living in America. Love that song. 

Greg: Anyway, so after we've done that, now we're exhausted. Right. But I feel like we've improved ourselves. Yes. So coming out of the last conversation, if you haven't listened to it, it's about self improvement or improving ourselves, like God helping us to improve ourselves and being the best version of ourselves. And I feel like we are closer to being the best version of ourselves after our vigorous exercise between these conversations. 

Ed: We'll have to go to confessional and confess lying about what we just did, but other than that... Right, right, 

Greg: because we didn't do any of that. But we could have, and we thought about it. Right. So in some sense it feels good intentions count. Well, no, I mean, it's an actual example of what we talked about in the last episode. There we go. See, God has given [00:02:00] us a beautiful afternoon. We're out here in the secret compound. There's trails through the woods, and we could have gone and done all that. But, you know, we, we just didn't have my, 

Ed: As one of my pastors said to me a number of years ago, nobody's a complete waste. You can always serve as a bad example. 

Greg: And we're, we're doing that. And we're doing that. And and we're going to talk about the Rocky movies, maybe talking about well, the new podcast that we'll be starting sooner that we're going to be saying more about It's we'll keep the considering Catholicism is going to continue, but there'll be another podcast that's just. Ed and I, and we're going to just talk about stuff that we think is interesting. Right. And so we're going to have to talk about movies. Yeah, sure. And we're going to do things like movie reviews and book reviews and fun stuff and everything. But we'll have to talk about movies and we're going to, in that conversation of course, we're going to have to talk about the Rocky movies. Yeah. Because I, I, I like the Rocky movies. You can't get away from them. I like the Rocky movies, but anyway, Rocky is someone who improved himself. There we go. See? So coming out of the last episode. Look at [00:03:00] that. Rocky started here. He's like a, an example of exactly what we talked about in the last episode. He started here and over time he improved himself. 

Ed: I see what you did there. It's clever. 

Greg: You see what I did there. So now we're going to kind of pick this conversation up and talk about I think something comes out of that, and I think, you know, I can work a Rocky analogy into this But basically, we talked about the duty in the last conversation, the duty or responsibility to be the best version of ourselves, and that that is really an issue of stewardship of the life that we've been given. God gives us a body. He gives us time. He gives us money. He gives us relationships. He gives us opportunities.

He gives us all this. And we can either be good stewards of those things , and become over time more and more mature stronger, better, people or we can not and just sort of , get stuck, , plateaued, no sense of improvement. Where I want to talk about in this conversation is that part of that is, I think, our attitude or maybe even [00:04:00] something deeper than attitude, which is our sort of state of our heart.

Okay, so if you listen to the last episode say, okay, I'm gonna be a good steward I'm gonna take better care of my body, better care of my money, better care of my relationships I'm gonna use my time more wisely, you know, etc, etc, etc. But there's this other thing which is your mind, your heart , the Bible a lot of times uses this concept of heart to mean the sort of center of you Right.

Right. And it includes kind of the concept of your mind, your emotions, And the state of that well, I guess the issue is, do we have a responsibility or a duty to try, as best as we can, to be as happy as we can be? Do we have a duty to try and be happy? 

Ed: Well, you said, you said at lunch, let's talk about this. You didn't talk very much about it. But [00:05:00] I I think that I have always felt like, I don't know if this is an evangelical thing or what. If I'm too happy I'm not taking myself seriously enough. I need to be humble and admit what a horrible person I am. You know? Does 

Greg: that goes back to something that you mentioned in the last episode, and I said, remind me of it when we get to this one. And that was, you want to tell the story again about your, the pastor that you know. 

Ed: Yeah, one of the guys who preaches at the church we attend, the big church, multiple pastors, said, sort of as an aside, one Sunday, like a year ago or whatever, he said, if you're not... Getting out into the woods and lying down on your face and, and pulling up handfuls of grass and dirt and leaves and telling God what a worm you are, then you're not, you're not doing it right. You have, sometimes you just have to do that. You have to remind yourself, and I remember on the way home saying, I am to my wife. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna be miserable and I'm not gonna make myself miserable. I'd like to feel like. I've gotten past that a little bit, 

Greg: so [00:06:00] I know who you're talking about. Mm-hmm. and first of all, that comes for that person out of this hyper Calvinism. Okay. So one of the characteristics of Calvinism is one of the five points of Calvinism. The, there's this famous acronym of Tulip, right? T U L I P. They're the five sort of points of Calvinist doctrine.

And the first one, T stands for total depravity. That we are completely depraved. There's nothing good within us. And that the beginning of salvation is to realize that anything that's good in us is only because God puts it there. And that other than God, we are a worm. And there's, these famous, , things out of Calvinism, famous Calvinist, you know, sermons. The whole, you know, we are, we are like a, you know, a worm or something dangling over a flame of hell. And, we have to realize there's nothing good in us. , even if we choose to become Christians, it's only because the Holy Spirit has put it there because there's [00:07:00] nothing good.

So first of all, it comes out of a... A hyper Calvinism. And I, went to Calvin Theological Seminary, so I'm very, very familiar with Calvinism. I came out of that and so I, I know where that's coming from. I know the individual you're talking about and, and for me, I, I grew out of that to become Catholic, and partly because I , came to completely reject that theology.

Right. And, and for me, it's almost incomprehensible And I want to get back to the happiness thing for a second because, , my thing is if I go out there and lay in the woods and just, you know, roll around in the dirt and say, I am just a miserable worm of a sinner, right? When, when is that over? Exactly. Well, for the Calvinists, never. Right. Right? You just need to be regularly reminded of that. 

Ed: Eternity will be filled with these miserable wretches that, 

Greg: yeah. But, but the thing is, is you go, right, so do I roll around in the [00:08:00] dirt for two hours, three hours, six hours, four days, and then I get up and dust myself off and go, okay, I'm better now.

I've, I've rolled in the dirt enough. And see, I came to realize that, , you contrasted that. with the Catholic Sacrament of Confession and Reconciliation. So, for me, , one of the great joys is to say, well, I do bad things. I am sinful. And when I commit sins, I go to confession. And I go in and I say, forgive me for I have sinned. It's been, however many weeks or whatever since my last confession. Right. And here are the sins that I've committed. Right. And I have that conversation with the priest, And then he listens, and then I make a... An act of repentance, right, where I say I am actually sorry for this, and then I express a firm amendment to change. I am genuinely sorry for these sins. I fear the fires of hell. I long for heaven. And I am going to do everything in my power [00:09:00] to amend my ways and change and try not to do them again. And then the absolution. And I'm reconciled with God. And then, you know, as you've talked about before, G. D. K. Chesterton had this famous quote where he said, Every time I walk out of confession, I'm five minutes old again. Right. And every time I walk out of confession, I go, I feel brand new again. Right. Right? And, and I feel happy.

Now, I, I don't want to go too far down the confession thing here because I want to get back to the happiness thing, but I have a duty to sort of pursue, I think in the same way I pursue improvement in all areas of my life, improvement in my heart and my mind and my attitude. And I guess I got to thinking about this lately because I've been doing some work with some medical neuroscience projects some writing projects and doing some research on that. And you start looking at the prevalence of anxiety. depression, , among people. And there's a lot of that [00:10:00] that is genetic, it's biochemical, it's neurologically driven, and I'm certainly in no way, shape, or form, because I've been working on this under saying that all of this is just a choice that somebody makes. Right. You can sort of like choose to , snap out of it. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is, to the degree that it is up to us, we have a responsibility, I think. To try to not only be the best version of ourselves in all those other ways, but also the best version of ourselves in terms of our attitude, our heart, and our mind, and our emotions.

And part of that is pursuing happiness and joy. Right. And to try to be as happy and joyful as possible. As we can be. Right. Because, again, if we're stewards and God comes back and says, What did you do with your heart and your mind and your emotions? Did you cultivate [00:11:00] sadness and misery and self pity and anger and all of these kinds of things?

Or did you cultivate in yourself generosity, kindness, joy? You know, Paul says that those are actually fruits of the Spirit. He says, you know, the fruits of the sinful nature are anger, , jealousy right, self centeredness. But the fruits of the Holy Spirit in your life, , are joy, peace, patience, kindness, self control. All of those things, Paul says, are fruits of the Holy Spirit. So, do I think we have a responsibility to cultivate and allow the Holy Spirit to cultivate within us those attitudes. Right. Those feelings, those orientations in our heart. And, to some degree, I mean, we call that happiness. 

Ed: Well, it seems like a good way to live.

Greg: You know, we'll talk [00:12:00] about what happiness is in a second here, but I, I remember when my kids were growing up, I used to say to them over and over again to the point that they got tired of hearing it, no doubt. I would say to them, you know, happiness is a choice, you know, I go, well, it is. I mean, you can sort of, and I think, you know, I get it. I get some people have terrible circumstances in life. I get that some people are struggling with neurological conditions or whatever that, prompt anxiety or depression or whatever. But, honestly, I would say to them, you know, you can choose to kind of go through life miserable. Right. Cultivating self pity being negative being involved in negative things that, , being involved with people , that are negative. Elon Musk or whatever has this thing where he talks about the media as a sadness generator. Oh, yeah. And I love that, right? You like, if you immerse yourself in our media [00:13:00] culture, it's a sadness generator.

And that makes nobody happy. They just become more and more miserable. The more you look at social media, the more you look at our entertainment, the more you look at this, nobody actually gets happy in it. It just generates, it cultivates a sadness in you. And so, you know, I'd say to my kids, you know, you can choose to feel sorry for yourself, you can choose to feel angry, you can choose to go through life always looking at the glass as half empty. Right. Right. You can choose to like, go through life, you know, surrounding yourself with negative people. You can choose to watch negative entertainment. You can choose to listen to music or read books that just cultivate negativity and misery in you. Or you can choose to go through life and say, I'm going to choose to be positive. I'm going to read positive things. I'm going to, to the degree that it's up to me, be around positive people, take positive inputs, choose to try to have an optimistic attitude towards life. I'm going to, as best as it's up to me. to me cultivate that 

Ed: pitch, [00:14:00] pitch your tent facing that way. 

Greg: and you know, the one thing is other rules I had for my kids always for myself and if the kids, I still have this rule is that if some, if you take a huge setback in life, right, something goes really wrong, you know, you lose your job, you this, that I said, you have, you get 48 hours to sulk, right?

Right. You can feel sorry for yourself for 48 hours. I get it. You just, something bad just happened, and, and so now you can, you can go and you can feel sorry for yourself, you can indulge that feeling for 48 hours, but at the end of 48 hours, you've got to say, now how am I going to begin to move forward?

What am I going to try to do to begin? Moving forward, and I've, I've, I've always tried to never let myself sort of sulk or feel sorry for myself for more than you know, I've had my moments where I've indulged Right. Indulged it for a day or two. Yep. And then after about two days of sort of feeling sorry for myself, I, I, I just can't sit here. I need to Right. I need to get up and figure out what, right. [00:15:00] What's next? So, let's talk about happiness for a second, because it seems to me, like, when we talk about happiness in the Bible, that, , we're dealing with Hebrew or Greek words, and always things are lost in translation. Right. And I won't get into a whole list of the words that are translated as happiness and joy, but there's a series of words in Hebrew and in Greek that are used in Scripture.

But let's talk about how these words are understood in English, So, up until, again, five minutes ago in world history, You would have talked about happiness as something deeper and closer to joy. Yeah. But what we mean by happiness today is simply immediate gratification. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's an emotion.

Happiness is just a feeling. It's , contrasted with feeling sad or unhappy. Right. And so it's a emotional reaction or an emotional state. So when you think about happiness that [00:16:00] way, you're going to say, well, if all this is, my current. Emotion that I'm going to pursue things that give me a dopamine hit dopamine being the chemical in your brain It makes you right so whether that's drugs or alcohol or sex or Spending money, or food, yeah, stuffing my face, 10, 000, anything that gives me that dopamine hit.

Right. And you know, it's interesting when you talk about social media, or video games, or our media, how much of that, and how neuroscientists work in that, to try to condition that to give you that constant dopamine hit. Right. Right? The TikTok video, the video game that just, right? So watch a young man play a video game for nine hours. Right. Just because it's giving his brain this constant dopamine hit. Or watch a you know, teenage girl, whatever, on Instagram or TikTok just [00:17:00] scrolling this stuff for instant dopamine hits. Right. See, that's, that's gonna give you that instant feeling of euphoria that isn't, doesn't lead... ultimately to happiness.

Ed: Right. Right. Yes, I am. I'm guilty of that myself. But I think if I look back at my life, the things that have given me that bring me consistent happiness are not those kinds of things at all. You know, it's developing relationships with my, with my kids and my kids all live. I have many and they live And they live several states away, most of them.

I'm going out there in a week. Yeah. To to hang out with them for nine or ten days. That'd be great. That always brings a lasting change. That's a good thing. It's a lot better than I'm, I'm right, I'm currently have a, just a very minor addiction to a little video game on my phone.

Right. But... 

Greg: C. S. Lewis in, I think it's in Mere Christianity, but I mean, I don't know where it is, but he, he talks about how and it's not a unique insight not everything Lewis did is just [00:18:00] summarizing And he always just summarized sort of Christian, the consensus of Christian thought over the centuries, right?

But he has a great way of putting it. He says, , no one ever becomes happy by pursuing happiness as an end, right? So if you go out and you chase happiness, what you're gonna end up with is Chase of the dopamine hit, right. So whether that's hey, man, I take this hit of heroin Right, right the video game or I stuff my face with my second pizza or you know cram another donut or or gamble or Whatever, right?

Like the, the, the fix of like gambling , gives you that immediate dopamine hit when you're doing it, right? But he says it never leads to genuine happiness, because , it never can fill you. It's always like the one dopamine hit the next one, the next minute, and it never produces a lasting state of happiness in you.

You just need more and more, [00:19:00] right? You know, the saddest thing in the world is to go to a casino. And, right, and, you know, I remember growing up watching James Bond movies. And you'd always see James Bond, and he's in Monte Carlo. And he's in a tuxedo with a martini, shaken mustard, or whatever, right? And he's at the baccarat table or something with all these sophisticated, , people and beautiful women, right? But you go to a real casino. Yeah, it's not like that No, and you go into most of them and what it is is a whole bunch of retired people that get off a bus Right, and they'll sit there at these video poker or slot machines right right for Nine hours in this room with artificial light, no windows, and then they'll bring them food and they'll be like this little tray next to them and they're stuffing themselves with food and smoking, chain smoking and drinking while they gamble [00:20:00] away their Social security check, right, you know on ding ding ding hitting the video poker button or the slot and it's really sad I remember my daughter had never seen a casino. We were down in Arizona one time I'd been with me on a trip and there's this Indian casino just outside Scottsdale and One night she's like I've never seen a casino and I'm like, let me take you to one We'll walk around as you can see what it's like And she was there for 20 minutes, she goes, This is just sad.

And I go, Yeah, it's a sad, it's a sadness generator. Right. It doesn't produce lasting happiness. Right. Now, substitute the casino with playing video games 40 hours a week. Or, Instagram, or TikTok, or going to bars and picking up people for , random sexual encounters on Tinder or whatever it is that they do today, or thrill seeking, or whatever it is, you know, right? Gluttony. , pursuing any of those immediate [00:21:00] gratification things never leads to genuine lasting happiness or joy. So I was looking in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the section where it talks about happiness, a couple places that mentions it, but it's really interesting. It talks about happiness in the section where it talks about the Beatitudes.

So the Beatitudes are in Matthew, Chapter 5. This is Jesus Sermon on the Mount. And he comes up and he says, Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the peacemakers, , and he goes through this whole list of things, that these people are blessed because... They seek the kingdom of God first. So, back to C. S. Lewis, he said, no one ever becomes happy because they pursued happiness. What it is, is they go out and pursue some good. And he said, it's like, the man who takes up a hobby, doesn't matter what it is, woodworking, bird watching. [00:22:00] Right. you know, whatever, croquet. Right. And he goes out and he, and he's out there birdwatching, or he's out there cataloging, writing down the birds he saw, or he's out there in his workshop making a coffee table, or whatever it is that you do when you're woodworking, right? And he goes and he does this, and somewhere along the way in pursuing this good, he finds that he's just... happy.

Right. Take away the hobby and make it volunteering, or make it going to see your kids, raising your family, being generous with your money you know, serving, worshipping, right? I mean, when you pursue something that's true and good and beautiful, which is basically pursuing God, following those things to the kingdom of heaven, along the way... You find happiness and joy because, in a sense, you've stepped out of yourself and stopped serving yourself. 

Ed: Right. And peace and contentment. Yeah. Which are hard to find in... Yeah, you're never going to find that. 

Greg: [00:23:00] So, I've been thinking a lot lately \ about myself. Because it's always, I don't want to just point at other people. Right. But sometimes, you learn about yourself because you see things in others and then that becomes a reflection of what you see in yourself. It's easy for me to point that guy, at that guy over there and go, look at that guy, , and then, but that almost becomes a mirror to see what's going on inside my own heart.

Right. But you know, when I think about that, I've been thinking a lot lately about people who maybe they do have some propensity or predisposition towards depression or anxiety because of genetics, because of neurochemical things, because of their, you know, whatever, right? But then what they do, I'm thinking of them, some people, and then I look at myself is then instead of saying, all right, I have this propensity to feel depressed. So what am I going to do with that? If I know that's the case, then I should be pursuing [00:24:00] happiness and joy to get myself as much as I can. Right. Yeah. Move past that. One of the things that our society tempts me to do is to just sort of, what's the word, like wallow? Marinate? Yeah, yeah. Marinate in the sadness generation stuff.

So knowing that I have a propensity to say, to depression because of genetics, because of, , neurochemical things, whatever. Knowing that. I then expose myself to 14 hours a day of politics on TV, and social media, and whatever, and listening to, , negative entertainment, and so now what I've done, and I'll tell you, nothing will mess you up like looking at the news all day. Right, right. Seriously, right? It's become like this perverse entertainment. Yeah. You and I were talking before we started the recorder about, if you went back a thousand years ago or 5, 000 years ago, , [00:25:00] people in the castle were always, there was always Palace intrigue or intrigue in the castle. So you know, the, the prime minister said something to the grand vizier who said something to the first quarter courtier who said something to the lady in waiting, who said something to the king. And then they like had little palace coups and all this kind of stuff. But there wasn't cable news , and social media and the internet. So you didn't follow all this stuff like in real time, you know, you were out Tending your cows or whatever, and then you might hear what has happened Hey, there's a new king, right? And I'm not saying we shouldn't be involved in our democracy or whatever, but what good does it do for you to spend 12 hours a day following... The latest twists and turns and scandals in Washington. And so, given that somebody's in that, you go, okay, so here's the deal. you have a propensity for anxiety and depression that, again, may be a genetic predisposition [00:26:00] or something physiological or whatever. But then what you do is you spend almost every waking hour immersing yourself They're filling yourself with negativity. Right. it's sort of a zero sum game. The, the, the pie can only be sliced in so many ways. You only have so many waking hours. Right. So every hour that you spend watching cable news, or surfing the internet, or listening, or watching crappy entertainment, or blowing up people in video games, or whatever it is that you're doing, all of that's an hour that you didn't go outdoors. Yeah. and cultivate. Your physical health or enjoy the creation. Sure. It's an hour that you didn't go read to a child It's an hour that you didn't go Volunteer and help somebody it's an hour that you didn't spend being present and listening to your loved ones Right. It's an hour that you didn't spend praying or reading scripture or [00:27:00] praying your rosary. It's an hour that you didn't go to daily mass. It's an hour, I mean, I go on all the list of things that you could do. Sure. And if you were using your time doing those, you might fill yourself with positive inputs. 

Ed: And those are easy things to think up. Anybody can do that. 

Greg: Oh yeah. It's easy. You can make a list. And , what that might do is cultivate in you happiness. And joy. And so I think it goes back to our first conversation that we had today about, which is the last episode, about stewardship. That if I use my time and opportunities well to become the best version of myself, I'm also cultivating happiness and joy. Mm hmm. And that why I think... Now, when the Lord comes back and he says so show me what you did with the opportunities I gave you, and you can say, well, I used my money well, , and I, , kept my health, and I mowed my lawn so that my house didn't look like a mess, , and all those kinds of things. and I gave at church on Sunday. [00:28:00] You know, I even showed up to church for an hour a week, but, I was just a negative, miserable person. Now, if that's because you were dealing with some kind of clinical depression or whatever, that's one thing, but, but you say, but what, well, God says, what did you do with your heart? Right. And your mind and your emotions? Did you cultivate? Joy and happiness. And if you didn't, is he going to say, Well done, good and faithful servant? Right. , when we did the Dante class, we talked about how the ultimate end, when you get to the top of heaven, , is that you have the beatific vision. You get to stand before the Holy Trinity with all the saints. Yeah. And joy, and absolute joy. And so it seems like we ought to be constantly trying to move toward that in our lives. Mm hmm. So, , I'm just feeling more and more I'm sort of kind of increasingly wanting to be done with negative [00:29:00] stuff.

Ed: You know, I, we were talking about this at lunch. You and I both like to read thrillers. And I've been reading thrillers all my life. Right? I've consumed numerous paperback novels. 

Greg: Well, you've turned me on to some really cool Right. Series of novels and stuff like that. 

Ed: Right. And some of it's pretty good. But a lot of it the stuff I tend to fold and put away and give away and not finish is the stuff where it's there's a lot of immorality. And there's a lot of bad, you know, bad behavior, and it's, and it's normalized. So I started, I was telling you at lunch that today I started re reading The Lord of the Rings for the, probably the sixth or eighth time. And what I'm encountering in it is a lot of goodness and morality. And, you know, the talk of Home and Hearth and all that. It's, it's very comforting. And he does a good job of contrasting that with the evil. And I find that to be, it's an uplifting [00:30:00] experience to read this. And I think maybe I should pursue a little more uplifting reading. It's good for me. 

Greg: You know, scripture talks about our tongue, right? And whether the words that come off our tongue are, are positive and encouraging words, right? Right. and I think increasingly you know, it's a whole Winnie the Pooh thing about Eeyore, right? Right. It's like being negative. And I, I just think back at how much of, of life has been a sadness generator. , and what I mean by that , is, I mean, life is gonna be full of heartaches. Right. , people you love are gonna die, and... Yep. There's gonna be tragedies, and, , all that. But I mean, like... The actual things in our culture that just generate dissatisfaction and negativity. Right. You know, and again, that's back to the entertainment that we consume. Sure. That's back to the news that we follow. Yep. That's back, and I'm not saying be a Pollyanna and not pay attention to what's going on in politics, because of course, as citizens, we should be involved in our democracy and all that kind of stuff. Sure. But there's just no point in, in sort of doom [00:31:00] scrolling the internet all day long.

Right. With the latest scandal and negativity and doom prediction, and then doom scrolling this, and then looking at entertainment. I mean, it's like social media, that there's all these studies that it shows that it creases all of this depression, anxiety in people, because so much of it whether it's Instagram or, , whatever, is people sort of, posing. as having a better life than they do. Right. And then you going everybody's going on great vacations, and everybody has a better life than me, and everybody this and that. And then, , you look at the, the theme or the plot of every television show as some kind of negative thing. And then, right? Right. Everything is and then the, all the music you consume are lyrics that are full of negativity. Right. And all this, and I just feel like as time goes on, I realize that I've engaged in way too much of that in my life. Yep. And I, And I want to be a happier, more joyful person, and I want to [00:32:00] pursue that. And I feel like increasingly I have a responsibility, a duty to, as best as I can, become as happy and positive and joyful of a person as I can. And that means I can't shut off the world, and I'm not going to shut off certain people that God puts in my life, but I'm also not going to just endlessly wallow and engage and marinate. In negativity or their negativity. Right. 

Ed: Doom scrolling. I gotta remember that. 

Greg: Oh yeah, I love that term. I wish I thought of it. Doom scrolling is when you just sit there with your thumb on your phone, Right. And you just scroll the internet, And it's one bad story after another after another. Right. You know, you know, you're reading the Lord of the Rings, really what social media and the internet has become for us is the palantir.

Remember the, the thing, and all that does, Sauron does is, is project bad news through it. So when you look into it, it just makes you terrified and afraid. So listen, folks pursue [00:33:00] happiness. joy, a genuine happiness, not just instant gratification, but, but genuine joy and happiness, and really examine the things in your life and ask how many of those things are, are contributing to happiness and joy, and how many of them are just sadness and negativity and misery generators.

Right. And, and I think that, again, this is a Considering Catholicism podcast, you know, there's so much from the saints about how to find it, about how to find joy, how to find happiness. But I think at the end of the day, it is a stewardship issue. Yeah. And , I do think when Christ returns, you want to hear him say, Well done, good and faithful servant.

That you have had the fruits of the Spirit in your life. You know, the joy, peace, kindness. Right. Generosity, self control. Right. Those kinds of things. 

Ed: Good stuff, Greg. Good things. . 

Greg: All right, Ed. Well, hey, before we check out here, I just want to remind everybody. These are our continuing effort to tease people. [00:34:00] Because, I'm understanding that's how this is supposed to work. We tease them. Right. And so we're teasing them that we are going to be launching a new podcast within the next couple of months. This podcast will continue, but another one, and it will be Ed and I, not necessarily talking about Catholicism and Christianity, although that may come into it in time things that we think are interesting topics.

And so if you like hearing Ed and I banter about interesting things there's going to be the opportunity to listen to that. 

Ed: So think we're going to wander far afield with this. 

Greg: Oh, I, I, yeah, there's, there's, it's going to be a lot of fun just to talk about the things that we think are interesting in life. And so if you think that it's interesting to listen to us, you're going to want to listen to that. So.

Conclusion

Thank you for listening. My name is Greg Smith, and if you've enjoyed this podcast, would you please hit the like and subscribe buttons wherever you get your podcasts, and please share it with others. And if you're curious about the Catholic worldview and faith, the [00:35:00] church and its saints, or Catholic history, culture, and art, then visit consideringcatholicism. And email me to let me know what you think. consideringcatholicism@gmai.Com