Clutter, Choices, and the Catholic Young Woman

I flip through magazines. I scan through the 10 pre-set radio channels in my car.  I skim Pinterest and Facebook and blogs and Boundless articles.

And every once in awhile, I stop. I think about the vast amount of information that goes through my mind every single day. We are constantly bombarded with stuff. While technology brings a lot of good and improvement into our lives, it also brings a lot of stuff. 

I start to wonder if we were ever meant to deal with so. much. stuff.

Is it really a good thing to have six hundred friends and their statuses to read each day? Is it really a good thing to have one thousand recipes available anytime I want to cook? Is it necessary to hear all the songs on the different stations before I choose one I want to hear? Do I have to visit ten colleges before deciding on one? Or date several young men just to find out ‘what I really want in a spouse?’

The Catholic young woman today is living in a time when options are endless. A wealth of choices is available now that would not have even existed a century ago—both for our professional or scholastic lives and for our leisure.  We are encouraged to “check out all our options” before we make any type of decision, large or small.

The abundance seems like a blessing at first glance and many times it can be. Yet there are a few downfalls to having countless possibilities: distraction, indecision, and dissatisfaction.

Distraction is harmless enough, right? Idleness is the devil’s playground after all. But what about when distraction becomes a habit…when we become restless, jumping from one activity to another—from one website or radio channel or facebook page to another while we avoid a more purposeful use of our time. If we cut out some of the mindless entertainment we indulge in (myself included, girls!), would we find that we’re really not as busy as we thought…and perhaps we have more time for prayer, service, and personal growth than it seemed?

 I tend to be indecisive at times. (Particularly in the grocery’s ice cream aisle with all those flavors…but I digress!) This is not a quality that I’m proud of but one I continue to work on as I learn to make God-honoring decisions and to be faithful to them. But all those choices we talked about earlier? They definitely make this goal challenging! The more options to which we’re exposed, the more time we want to analyze each one before making a decision (fellow perfectionists, you know what I’m talkin’ about). While it’s reasonable and important to prayerfully and thoughtfully discern decisions in our life…it’s also reasonable and important to actually choose. Yes, girls, I am learning that God is sometimes honored more by our choosing and remaining faithful in that choice than He is by our worrying and mulling and weighing and glorifying the decision-making process.

Finally, I’m concerned that we are becoming a dissatisfied generation because of so many choices. We are accustomed to over-stimulation instead of simplicity. We are taught to return the item (or person!) when we are bored and tired of it. We are encouraged to multi-task—watching TV while we eat, talking on the phone while we drive, or texting while we push a grocery cart (excuse me, ma’am! You’re standing in front of the cereal I like!). Are these habits really helping us to experience life more fully? Or are our senses being dulled to the present moment as we lose our ability to focus on one thing at a time? As soon as we make a choice, are we second-guessing ourselves knowing all the other choices we could have made instead?

For the record, I still love Pinterest. I still keep up with friends on facebook. And unfortunately, my fingers still reach to change the pre-sets on my car radio frequently. Are such little habits really able to make me distracted, indecisive, and dissatisfied? I think they can. So I’m practicing awareness of the present moment and the way I spend my time. I’m challenging myself to slow down, be quieter, practice contentment, make decisions with trust and faithfulness. It’s the little choices today—like lifting my heart in prayer instead of checking my email or turning off my phone on dates or smiling at the grocery store cashier (even if it’s because of my successful trip in the ice cream aisle)—that will affect the bigger choices tomorrow. 

Simplify and de-clutter where you can in your life. God is in the present moment. We should be, too.