40 Days, 40 Nights

My 40 Days, 40 Nights will be over in less than 20 hours, and i will have fulfilled my seasonal Catholic obligation. But what does it really mean to me? Am I a better person now? Have I become a more responsible Catholic? Should I even call myself that? Or am I just pretending/experimenting/hiding? The truth is, I don't really know.

My Catholic friends said they gave up meat (only on Fridays) for Lent. It's the most standard, most generic form of this Lent-thing-sacrifice, but I've always thought it fake and effortless. I mean, doesn't Lent mean making a sacrifice (I'm guessing to give you a feel of how it was like to be crucified, etc) and doesn't "sacrifice" mean exerting some kind of effort to give up a little comfort? My point is, not eating meat once a week is barely a sacrifice. It's not even hard. You could just go ahead and substitute shrimp or you could just eat more sushi---alternatives that are actually more expensive, and therefore defeats the whole purpose of "giving up a little comfort."

I'm not judging because who am I to judge, right? You could even argue that when I decided to give up candy and chocolate in all forms, I was just trying to lose some vanity pounds. (But I really did lose ~4 lbs) Or when I gave up facebook, it was just a lame excuse for me not to go on it because what's the point? I had nothing exciting planned out, which would inevitably lead to my lack of facebook activity. Maybe all I wanted was to justify my lack of fb activity so people wouldn't think I had a very mundane life and should just die a painful death. Or when I said I wouldn't consume any alcohol, maybe I was just trying to heal my liver a little and because no one, at that time, had asked me to go drinking.

If you ask me what I learned from this experience, I'll tell you I'm too vain. Maybe I'm just too vain to even make a real, legitimate sacrifice.

But you should know that I failed the alcohol sacrifice (see post from a while back). And this is making me feel a little bad sometimes. A friend of mine said she was proud of me for giving up alcohol for Lent because most people would just give up meat like her. And then on the same night that she said it, I got drunk. So much for trying, right?

Now, ten dollars worth of candy is sitting ten feet away and it's waiting for my celebratory candy-binging session at midnight. And to think that everything that I called "sacrifice" will only come to this, it's almost shameful. I really shouldn't even try anymore.

So f--- it.