Sex

So the past couple of days I've been watching the show 'How I Met Your Mother'. Now I've always loved this show and don't get me wrong, as mindless TV goes it's a good show. But I've been watching it again and I can't help but feel disillusioned. There's this one episode where one character asks another how long it's been since they had sex. The reply is like 57 days or something. That's less than two months. And this is treated like this is something really awful and terrible, some great torture that poor Ted has to endure. It just kind of speaks to this wider attitude that we are constantly bombarded with nowadays. It's like if you're not having as much sex as possible with as many partners as possible then you're doing something wrong and your life is just being wasted. Which is really, really sad. It makes me so sad to see the world like this. I get it, I've been there. I understand the lure of the false promises the world offers. It's enticing and for those who are in spiritual darkness like I was it is very difficult to resist. The world tells us that sex is essential to our happiness and our entire culture seems to revolve around it. I'm not entirely sure what the point of this rant is, it's just been annoying me. 

And it's not just in media. It's people around us as well. Now I will confess I've been there. I feel into that trap and it made me miserable. I've never felt so awful in my entire life. Luckily I realised my mistakes after not too long and came back to the grace of God. There are others who are not so lucky. But I digress. I live with two friends, both guys. Neither are religious, though one is 'technically' Catholic. They both have girlfriends and in our society we all know what that means. I just stay out of it, they know my faith and in the end it's not my place to judge. But they've both said things that illustrate my point. One asked me how long it had been. So I told her, it's just over a year. And she looked at me like I was deprived of something, that I was some poor thing that deserved all this pity. It saddened me that this was the attitude, that it was so incomprehensible that I could be happy living as I am now. Because that's what people really think, they think you can't be happy or fulfilled without sex. The other, she also made a comment once that she couldn't live without sex. Is that not really sad, that people feel that their entire happiness is based on how much sex you have? Does no-one else see a serious problem with that? We depend so much on all these things we think will make us happy, not just sex but money, power, possessions, popularity. Yes, the media is a part of telling us these things but it comes from a wider societal attitude that comes from real people and real attitudes that we face in real, everyday life. 

This is a slight departure from my usual postings but this is something that has been bugging me recently. On a similar note, I was reading on the website for St Cecilia's they've got a section at the moment on the profession of vows since they had a solemn profession just last month of Sr Elizabeth, who is just 25 and entered at 19. So incredible, I really hope I can meet her some day. Nuns are just so amazing. Anyway I digress. There is a quote that struck me from the part of the profession where the nun receives her ring: "He has placed a sign upon my face that I may receive no lover but Him." I long to stand before God and say those words. The traps of the world have no hold on me, for I am betrothed to my Beloved.