The Noonday Demon in Our Distracted Age

What to do when a Netflix binge brings you more joy than God’s calling.

The spirit of acedia drives the monk out of his cell, but the monk who possesses perseverance will ever cultivate stillness. A person afflicted with acedia proposes visiting the sick, but is fulfilling his own purpose. A monk given to acedia is quick to undertake a service, but considers his own satisfaction to be a precept.
— Evagrius Ponticus, from On the Eight Thoughts

In the first year of my PhD program, I was 21, lonely, disoriented, utterly out of my depth, and unwilling to admit it. Instead of running to my professors for help or diving in at the library, I found myself avoiding homework altogether. I told myself I wasn’t working because I didn’t care about my classes, but the truth was, the fear of failure was too much to bear. I knew God had called me to this task, but as the difficulty of the work set in, my call became a source of sadness instead of joy.

I first heard the term acedia—what Thomas Aquinas defines as “sadness at an interior or spiritual good”—as a graduate student working as a teacher’s assistant for an intro to ethics course. I didn’t think much of it at first, but over time I realized this ancient Christian concept was at the center of my daily experience.

When my PhD program ended, my fight with acedia didn’t. Instead, it shifted to a realm I never expected: my relationship with my kids. It’s impossible to describe the joy of being a parent or the love you suddenly feel toward the tiny human who has been put into your care. However, in the daily grind of early mornings, diapers, cleaning, and endless negotiations, parenthood can seem onerous instead of joyful. Even now I occasionally find myself looking for escapes from the life that’s ...