Is it Beautiful or Not?

One

The Struggle of Free-Time

Last night a young man shared with me that he struggles to use his free time well, that he spends a lot of time scrolling on YouTube and TikTok and he feels really empty. I suggested that he read something good and he immediately responded that he had such and such a book he would read. I know the book and it’s horrible, but he has no way of knowing what is good for his soul and what is killing it.

This is precisely why we’re doing this series of meditations on how to use our free time or leisure. Because this young man is not alone. We are inundated with options for news, sports, entertainment, social media, movies, podcasts…on and on and on.

The soul, meaning the mind and emotions, needs to be fed by truth, beauty, and goodness. Beauty is comprised of order and surprise. Beauty is where we allow ourselves to be surprised by things being true and good and right, things being according to the order of how God created the world. But we are feeding our souls a lot of junk. In many cases, we are even ingesting poison, stuff that’s unconsciously killing us. 

So the first question must be: is what I am watching, listening to, or reading true, beautiful, and good? Or am I delighting in disorder and perversion?

Two

What do we mean by order?

As we said, beauty is comprised of order and surprise. By order, we mean God’s design for things. Things being the way they are supposed to be and doing what they are supposed to do. 

Disorder is the corruption of the way things are supposed to be and it’s when they don’t do what they’re supposed to do.

We should get pleasure from order and displeasure from disorder. Now, that doesn’t mean stories can’t have conflict.

For example, 50 Shades of Grey and Anna Karenina are both stories about love affairs. However, where 50 Shades of Grey wants us to delight in the disorder of the affair, Anna Karenina is about the consequences of the affair, it wants us to see the disorder of the affair, it wants us to desire the beauty of married love. 

Beauty powerfully engages our emotions and emotions are about how you feel. So, is a show or movie, book, piece of music, or art causing you to enjoy disorder? Does it make you feel good about disorder? If so, that is not good. That’s not beautiful.

Three

What do we mean by surprise?

Surprise is the mind’s response to what it does not find obvious, what it did not expect. It’s new, fresh, clever, original, innovative, interesting. The element of surprise keeps us from taking order for granted. So, for instance, your wife will appreciate you if you go to work every day and come home every day. But if that’s all you do, she will find you boring. However, if you surprise her by doing something for her that she did not expect, she will think it’s beautiful. 

Now, here is where it’s important to say not ALL surprise is good. She will appreciate you if you surprise her with flowers. She will not appreciate you if you surprise her by not coming home at all. Something that’s surprising but disordered is still bad. 

Take for instance A Clockwork Orange. Practically all the entertainment throughout the movie comes from the violence and sex and other disturbing elements, and then the surprise ending is totally twisted. The movie ends with Alex imagining himself committing violent acts before an applauding audience, indicating that he has returned to his old, violent self. This ending is surprising, but disgusting and disordered. It exists for the sake of shock.

Another example is the movie Momento, where the surprise ending is not only disordered but retroactively shows that the entire story that came before it was also completely disordered.

All of these endings are surprising, clever, and unexpected. But who of us can honestly say taking pleasure in these surprises makes us more fit for the joy of heaven?

Four

You will know a tree by its fruits.

The best way to know whether the way you use your free time is good or bad is to pay attention to how it makes you see and feel about life. 

When we feed the mind and soul through books, movies, music, and art, we should come away from it with a greater sense that a good God created a good world and he created us to be very good and that He is bringing everything to a good end. When we use our free time well, we feel happier, more grounded, and more alive. You are grateful for your life and the opportunities that life has given you. 

But binging on mindless entertainment is a terrible diet for the soul. It’s like eating a huge bag of candy corn. You feel disgusting afterward. You feel worse. You feel less happy about your life. You feel less able to face reality. 

And consuming entertainment that is disordered is worse. It poisons your soul. It makes us angry, full of anxiety, depressed, and despairing. It feeds our vices of pride, vanity, envy, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. 

So, what are you doing with your leisure time? And how do you feel afterward? Do you feel more excited to be alive? Or do you feel more intimidated and less enthusiastic about the real world? Or worse, does it cause you to desire what is evil and give you a disgust for what is true and good?

That should be your first clue.

Five

We don’t have to escape. We can enjoy.

Real leisure is where we do something that helps us remember and contemplate and rejoice – because it’s a good world, from a good God, and it’s good to be alive.

Distraction, by contrast, is an attempt to escape from reality. You try to distract yourself, to forget the real world for a while because you just can’t handle it anymore. You want a break, not just from work, but from life itself.

But you’d only try to distract yourself, escape from life if you somehow had forgotten how to see the goodness and the joyfulness of it. And that’s not a good place to be. And that’s not what you want to do with your free time. Free time is for happiness.

So don’t settle for mass-produced junk entertainment. Find something good and delightful that brings your soul to life. Find something to do or watch or read or listen to that makes you grateful for existence. 

We’re unhappy because we are distracted. We’re unhappy because we don’t stop, and look, and listen to the real world, to the beauty of nature, of our faith, of our spouses and kids. The point of leisure is to stop and pay attention and smile. Don’t ruin that by getting addicted to distraction through entertainment. We don’t need to escape. We can enjoy our leisure time, we can open up our minds and souls to new ideas, new insights which will afford us new joy. And then that joy will permeate through the rest of our day.

Then we will be able to follow St. Paul’s instruction to, “Rejoice in the Lord Always – again, I say, Rejoice!”