Tag: the secular world

Leaving the Secular Carousel.

A Reflection on the Gradual Reordering of My Life

Over these many, many years as I have been becoming more and more serious about my Catholic faith, I have noticed a remarkable change in myself—one that has unfolded slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, but unmistakably over the last fifteen years or so.  In this article, I write about how the secular world has been shrinking in my life, not out of disdain for the people in it, but because its offerings no longer nourish me.  I have been moving away from many secular things, both by deliberate choice and by the quiet providence of circumstance.  What once occupied my time, my attention, even my imagination, now feels strangely distant, as though it belonged to someone else’s life.

In my youth, I wasn’t a fan of modern music, particularly rock and roll.  But in my sophomore year, one morning while getting ready for school, I tuned into the local rock radio station to find out what the current music fad was all about.  My friends were into that music, and I didn’t want to be left out of conversations.  It felt harmless enough—just a way to fit in, to understand what everyone else seemed to enjoy.

Over the years, my taste in music expanded to that genre, though it never went into grunge or the harsher styles that followed.  But now, even that earlier music has become distasteful to me. The beat and melody might still be attractive, but the lyrics—so often vulgar, suggestive, or simply empty—are sickening.  That’s what gets people hooked: catchy rhythms and memorable musical notes.  The lyrics are an afterthought, or worse, a poison pill wrapped in sugar. I find myself wondering why I ever tolerated it, let alone enjoyed it.

The same goes for television programs.  I didn’t grow up in a house where the television was constantly on.  Until age sixteen or so, television was rare—a special thing to watch, almost an event.  But then something shifted, and before long meaningless programs like Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Three’s Company, WKRP, and various variety shows were playing regularly in our home.  Looking back, I am appalled that I allowed myself to waste time on such trivia: scantily clad people, taking God’s name in vain, sexual innuendo, name-calling, yelling, and cheap, vulgar laughs.  I don’t even find those programs funny or edifying now.  The detective and cop shows might have been tolerable—good guys catching bad guys—but even those were repetitive, predictable, and shallow.  And for what?  To kill time in the evening?  Why did I watch that garbage when I could have been reading good books, learning something worthwhile, or helping around the house?

Unfortunately, I was in a marriage once many moons ago where the television dominated the household the moment he walked through the door.  It stayed on until bedtime, a constant drone that filled every corner of the evening.  And even then, the bedroom television (yes, the senseless bedroom television) often blared until 11:30 PM.  That kind of environment was never for me.  I complained, he questioned why I wouldn’t watch because I’d have to have something to talk about at work in the morning with my co-workers.  I replied that I talked to my co-workers about work, not some stupid television program; that’s what I was paid for— work!  I tried to carve out pockets of quiet, busying myself with anything that felt less corrosive, but the noise was relentless, and the contrast between what I longed for and what surrounded me grew sharper with time.

Now that I have been away from television entirely for a good eighteen years, I don’t miss any part of it.  I couldn’t tell you what the latest shows are, or even if there are any worthwhile.  Yes, I still own a television, and I’ve used it to stream old movies from time to time, but even that has gone by the wayside for Lent this year, and I may not return to it afterward.  I don’t miss it.  I don’t crave it.  Its absence feels like fresh air.

And then there is social media—another thorn I am trying to remove.  It is astonishing how easily it lures, distracts, and scatters the mind. Even when I think I am using it “responsibly,” it has a way of pulling me into trivialities, arguments, or endless scrolling.  It promises connection but often delivers agitation.  It promises information but often makes noise.  It promises community but often fosters comparison and restlessness. I am working slowly but steadily, to loosen its grip.

Over time, these renunciations—vapid music, insipid television, thieving social media—have revealed something deeper than mere preference.  They dull the mind, yes, but more importantly, they crowd the soul.  By tossing them aside, I have begun to see the shape of my interior life gradually reclaimed.  What once felt “normal” now feels foreign, and what once seemed harmless now appears hollow.  I find that the less I cling to the secular world, the more interior freedom I gain.  This is not withdrawal but refinement: a quiet choosing of what leads me toward God and a holy life and away from the emptiness and noise that once filled my days.  In that choice, I am discovering a steadier, simpler, more meaningful, and far happier way to live. I write more, I pray more, I read more, I use my life better.

 

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Losing It with Quiet Discipline.

I have long known that the most reliable way to lose weight is also the least glamorous: change the way I eat, and do it without powders, liquids, pills, or any of the other gimmicks that promise transformation without effort.  They don’t work.  Real change comes from willpower, ordinary food, and an honest attitude.  These matter more than any trend.

This year, my efforts began even before Lent arrived.  A goal of losing eight pounds is losing eight pounds for more energy and just feeling better overall.  As January unfolded, I found myself preparing not only my interior life but also my habits.  I started cutting down on unnecessary snacking that crept in after supper.  Sure, I still indulged in a snack here and there, but it wasn’t gorging myself.  I continued my quiet campaign against corn syrup and the sugary additives that hide in so many foods.  And I returned to simpler cooking—meals that didn’t need to resemble anything from a fancy restaurant menu.  I proved to myself that I can cook anything well, so why do it every day?  That should be saved for special occasions.  Then I returned to meals that I grew up on that nourished rather than entertained.  There was a certain relief in that simplicity.

By the time Ash Wednesday arrived in mid‑February, I wasn’t scrambling to begin anything new.  I was simply continuing what had already taken root and ramping it up a bit.  The weight began to come off, slowly and steadily, and it still does.  But more importantly, the discipline of eating differently began to shape the discipline of living differently.

Attitude is half the work.  I stopped letting the noise of the secular world dictate my mood or my focus.  I ignored the foolishness that swirl around in headlines and conversations.  Instead, I turned my attention toward things that actually strengthen the soul: spiritual reading that lifts and edifies the mind and praying the Rosary with attentive meditation rather than mindless haste.  These practices didn’t just support my physical goals—they steadied my interior life.

There is a quiet joy in sacrifice when it is chosen freely and offered with purpose.  Lent simply gave me the structure to continue what had already begun: a return to simplicity, a clearer mind, and a heart more anchored in God than in the world’s distractions.

In the end, this has reminded me that caring for the body and caring for the soul are not competing tasks but parallel ones.  The more I simplified my meals, the more I found myself craving a simpler interior life as well — one less cluttered by noise, distraction, and the endless commentary of the world.  Lent simply gave shape to what I already sensed: that discipline is not a burden but a quiet form of freedom, and that small, steady acts of intention at the table and in prayer can reshape a life from the inside out.

 

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The Poverty of Perpetual Anger.

There is a particular sadness in watching people who live in a constant state of anger, and I see this quite a lot in my neighborhood, and especially since 2020.  Their anger is not the righteous anger that rises to defend the vulnerable, but the chronic, simmering kind; the kind that becomes a personality, a worldview, a permanent narrowing of the soul.  Some of these people turn ugly and violent when they are cordially greeted by neighbors.  These are people who treat every encounter as a contest, every disagreement as a threat, every difference as a personal insult.  Perhaps they believe they are defending themselves, but in truth they are defending the walls that imprison them.

Anger becomes their only vocabulary.  They speak it fluently, instinctively, even proudly, and peppered heavily with vulgar and filthy words.  But beneath that lies a deep poverty of spirit.  A person who must always be angry and offensive is a person who has forgotten how to be free and kind.

The tragedy is not merely that they harm others—though they do.  The deeper tragedy is what they lose within themselves without realizing it.

  • They lose the ability to be surprised by goodness.
  • They lose the capacity for joy that comes from generosity.
  • They lose the peace that only humility can give.
  • They lose the richness of a larger world than their own reflection.

They trade all of this for the brittle satisfaction of being “right” and boorish, even when that “rightness” isolates them.  They probably do not realize that the fortress they build to keep others out is the same fortress that keeps them in.

My sadness for them is not schmaltzy.  It is not the soft sadness of pity.  It is the sharper sadness that comes from recognizing wasted possibility.  These are people who could be expansive, curious, generous, a positive addition to the neighborhood, but instead they choose the cramped rooms of anger and rejection.  They choose to live in a world too small for any soul.  It is as though they are possessed by demons.

A life fueled by anger cannot lead to peace.  A heart closed to others cannot experience love.  A mind that rejects difference cannot grow.  They may cling to their fury and their narrowness as if these things protect them, but in the end, they protect nothing.  They only ensure that the person holding them remains untouched by the very things that make life worth living.

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The Profit That Destroys.

The question, “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” cuts to the heart of a tension that every era rediscovers: the difference between a life that looks impressive and a life that is actually worth living.  We are surrounded by metrics — influence, fame, money, reputation, achievement, status — that promise satisfaction but often deliver only more insatiable hunger.  The question forces us to confront a truth we instinctively know: a person can win by every external measure and still feel hollow inside, a dried-up husk of a person.

Modern culture is skilled at rewarding the wrong things.  It celebrates accumulation, visibility, and speed.  It teaches us to optimize our schedules, polish our image, and chase the next milestone.  None of these pursuits are inherently harmful, but they become dangerous when they eclipse the quieter, more essential work of becoming a whole human being.  A person can spend decades climbing a ladder only to discover it was leaning against the wrong wall.

Losing oneself rarely happens in a dramatic collapse. More often, it happens gradually, when convenience replaces integrity, when ambition overrides relationships, when the greedy pursuit of More! More! More! crowds out the pursuit of meaning.  The world applauds these compromises; our inner life does not.  The cost is subtle but real: a thinning of character, a shrinking of joy, a sense that life is happening faster than we can live it.

To gain the world is easy.  It requires only that we follow the current cultural expectation.  To keep oneself intact is harder.  It demands reflection, boundaries, and the courage to choose depth over display, but only one of these paths leads to a life that feels like one’s own.

In the end, the question remains a challenge to every generation: what good is success if it costs you the very person you were meant to become?  The world offers many rewards, but none of them are worth the loss of yourself and your eternal spirit.

 

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Offers That I Find Easy to Refuse.

For the past two or three years, my phone has been ringing with a very specific kind of enthusiasm.  Several times a day — three, sometimes five times — I receive calls and texts asking if I’m “ready to sell my property at_____.”  It’s a property I do not own, nor ever owned.  A property that exists only in the imagination of whoever first decided my number belonged to a motivated seller.

The messages come in waves: cheerful, urgent, persistent.  Some sound like they’re offering me a golden opportunity.  Others read like they’re doing me a favor.  All of them are wrong, and all of them go unanswered and will forever go unanswered.

I’ve learned to recognize the numbers instantly because they are always marked as “spam” calls.  They rotate the numbers, of course—these operations always do—but the tone is always someone who believes they’ve found a lead, when in reality, they’ve found a person who will never respond, never engage, never confirm or deny anything.  Silence is my only contribution to their business model.

I have a suspicion about how my number got into circulation, and woe be unto them for providing my number to evildoers.

It’s a running joke between me and everyone who knows I get those calls: another day, another imaginary property to sell, another hearty laugh.

And still, I never answer.  Not ever.

+click+ +delete+ and laugh.

Simple as that.

 

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The Noise We Mistake for Knowledge.

 

We live in an age where information is abundant, but much of what passes for “news” today is not news at all.  It’s noise, and you know that.  It’s carefully packaged, endlessly repeated, and designed to keep us stupidly watching rather than sensibly thinking.  The problem is not merely the volume of what we consume, but the nature of it because much of what presents itself as “news” is, in truth, non‑news — content engineered to provoke reaction and emotion rather than understanding.  Discernment, then, becomes not a luxury but a moral necessity.  Headlines flash, opinions multiply, and yet very little of it has any bearing on our actual lives.  The result is a subtle erosion of time, attention, our brain cells, and inner peace, and if we bow down to the mindless blather, we allow others to steal our time.  Yes—steal our time and ultimately shapes our habits.

Non‑news thrives on immediacy.  It demands attention without earning it.  It offers the illusion of being informed while quietly draining the very faculties that make genuine understanding possible.  The result is a culture that is constantly stimulated yet rarely enlightened.  We scroll, we skim, we react, and at the end of it, we are no closer to truth.  The deeper danger of non‑news is not that it wastes minutes but that it shapes habits.  It trains us to expect superficiality, to prefer outrage over reflection, to treat every passing headline as a crisis.  A society that cannot tell the difference between the essential and the irrelevant becomes easy to manipulate and difficult to awaken.

True news informs and clarifies, and it should edify us.  It should help a person understand the world.  But this blather does the opposite: it distracts, inflames, and consumes hours that could have been spent on something productive.  It is astonishing how quickly a day can disappear into commentary, speculation, and manufactured outrage that leaves us no knowledgeable than before.

The danger is not merely wasted time; it’s also wasted focus and a counterfeit form of engagement.  When we allow trivial stories to occupy our minds, we lose the capacity to notice what genuinely matters: the people around us, the responsibilities entrusted to us, the quiet work that builds a meaningful life.  Non‑news thrives on urgency, but it produces nothing lasting.

Discernment asks a different question: Is this worthy of my time, my mind, my peace?  It is a refusal to let trivialities masquerade as significance.  It is the discipline of distinguishing between what is merely loud and what is actually important.  In a culture that profits from distraction, such clarity is countercultural.  Choosing to step away from it is not ignorance; it is discernment.  It is the decision to guard one’s attention as a precious resource rather than surrender it to whatever happens to be fashionably trending.  A person who refuses to be pulled into the churn of non‑news gains something rare in our age: clarity of mind and control of oneself.

When we decline to participate in the churn of non‑news, we reclaim our attention for what is real: the responsibilities before us, the people entrusted to us, the truths that do not change with the news cycle.  We become less reactive and more rooted.  Sure, the world will always offer distractions, but we are not obligated to accept them.  Our time is finite, and our attention is inviolable.  Spending it wisely is an act of both strength and sanity.

 

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The Decline of Language Originality.

Have you noticed that our language has gone stale?  Once vibrant words and phrases have been replaced by a handful of recycled expressions that people toss around as if cheap confetti.  We’ve become a culture of verbal shortcuts—catchphrases, memes, and pre-chewed reactions—leaving very little room for originality, nuance, or even basic thought.

So perhaps it’s time to retire a few of these linguistic relics and replace them with something more intelligent, more intentional, and frankly, more dignified.

Take cringe, for example.  This single word now is deployed as a universal dismissal, a way to avoid forming an actual opinion.  Instead of describing what makes us uncomfortable or why, we simply slap the “cringe” label on it and move on.  It’s the conversational equivalent of shrugging.

Then there’s the ever popular “What! What?”  That’s a phrase that pretends to express astonishment but usually signals nothing more than performative confusion.  It’s noise masquerading as reaction.

And of course, the internet’s favorite template:  Tell me you’re ____ without telling me you’re ____.  Perhaps it was a clever structure the first time it appeared, perhaps even the second time.  But now it’s a tired formula, a linguistic Mad Libs game that saves us from the burden of crafting an original thought.

“How cool is that?” has also run its course.  It’s a placeholder, a filler, a way to feign enthusiasm without committing to any real sentiment.  It’s a way for the older generation to be hip with the kids.  It’s the verbal equivalent of nodding politely while thinking about something else.

“The fourth be with you”—a absurd pun that has lived far, far beyond its natural lifespan and continues to resurface every May, as if repetition alone could make it clever again.

And finally, there’s IYKYK (“if you know, you know”).  Here’s a phrase that pretends to signal insider knowledge but usually functions as a way to avoid explaining anything.  It’s exclusivity without substance.

Here’s a list of my suggestions of clichés and phrases we need to retire post haste:

Glow Up

Gaslight

Today years old.

Narcissist / Narcissism

Tell me you’re ____ without telling me you’re ____.

Chilling (as in, “chilling details,” “chilling video,” et cetera)

W’s (or anything using “W” for the word “win.”)

May the fourth be with you.

Awesome / Amazing

Asking for a friend.

You (We) got this!

How cool is that?

Game changer

Wait!  What?

IYKYK

Literally

Cringe

Iconic

The “F” word

These expressions are simply worn out, dehydrated by overuse, leaving behind only the dry husk of what once felt fresh.  Language deserves better, and so do we.  Thoughtful speech invites thoughtful living.  When we choose words with care, we sharpen our minds, deepen our conversations, and reclaim a bit of originality in a world that keeps trying to flatten everything into sameness.

If we want richer conversations, we must start by choosing richer language.  Retiring these worn-out phrases isn’t about being pretentious; it’s about making room for clarity and genuine expression.  In a culture that thrives on shortcuts, choosing real words might just be the most radical act of all.

 

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The Quiet Freedom of Downsizing.

To live in the world does not mean to be of the world.

Decluttering for my downsize from a large and charming house into a small and pretty condominium has been very freeing— not in a dramatic or sentimental way, but in the simple, practical sense of watching my home become cozier, easier to live in, simpler, and practical.

Before the move, as I sorted through closets, desk drawers, and the pantry, I realized how much space was quietly being taken up by things I no longer use, need, or even notice.  Letting them go has lifted a weight I didn’t realize I was carrying.  The donations to a local thrift store and selling some of the unnecessaries on eBay were enormous: bed, dressers, couches, wing-back chairs, kitchen items, extra knitting needles and crochet hooks, and clothes.  Each shelf cleared, each drawer emptied, every excess piece of furniture donated, each bag of unwanted clothes brought a small but actual sense of relief.  I felt lighter, and the burden is gone!

Another part of downsizing was unsubscribing to businesses I no longer have a need.  It reduced my e-mails, and it also inspired me to get a new password book and reorganize my passwords and account numbers to necessary sources.

Downsizing has also made daily life more manageable.  With fewer belongings, there’s less to clean, less to organize, less to keep track of, less to clutter shelves, closets and cabinets.  Surfaces stay clear longer.  Rooms breathe.  I can find what I need without becoming disgusted at the overflow.  Even the atmosphere feels different— calmer, less crowded, minimal, attractive.  It’s amazing how much peace comes from simply having less.  The home begins to work with you instead of against you.

One of the other positives, too, was that the moving truck wasn’t stuffed with “things.”  Everything that was loaded up was exactly what was needed in the new place.  No “maybes,” no “I’ll think about it later.”

Now, after settling in the new place, I decide that when any piece of clothing becomes too worn out to wear, it gets thrown out and its replacement is questionable.  I don’t need seven pairs of shoes or a dozen dresses.  All that cheesy costume jewelry?  Gone.  Purses?  Three are enough.  A plastic serving spoon breaks, and I don’t replace it since I have wooden ones to use.  Now all of the replacements are up for discussion, and rightly so.

This process has reminded me that a peaceful home isn’t created all at once; it’s built through small, steady decisions.  Choosing what truly serves your life today.  Releasing what belongs to the past.  Making room for order, beauty, and ease.  Downsizing has become a way of shaping my home into a place that supports the life I’m living now— not the lavish life I lived years ago, and not the life I imagined I might need to prepare for someday.

If anything, this move has taught me that simplicity is practical.  It’s not about perfection or minimalism for its own sake.  It’s about creating a home that feels manageable, welcoming, and aligned right.  And in that sense, the freedom I’ve found is not abstract at all— it’s woven into the daily rhythm of living in a space that finally feels like it fits right.

As I continue to live in the world without being of the world, I find myself being better-off and having more time to pray and read good, clean, and educational material.

You would be surprised at how little a person really needs to function in this life.

Peace,

Susan Marie Molloy

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