#or learns through great struggle to have joy. aka gkc

[soldier-poet-king]

I started the imitation of christ as a lead up to Christmas, reading a bit each day and like I Get that he was a monk and I even get why he says what he does but like....90% of this advice is a recipe for "how to make Fran kill herself" and I'm just. Ik that perhaps..... This is not advice intended for an extremely sensitive scrupulous depressed person but also. Geez Louise. He's basically a gnostic with his whole "the world sucks. You should hate and turn away from all pleasure and joy" like ok???? Yes ofc duty should come before personal pleasure, but if joy comes by you honestly you don't have to turn it away?? Imma side with Chesterton on this one tbh. Joy is good. Material creation is good. Being an human person in an embodied soul is good.

Several hundreds of years before my birth this man's out here writing a book of 'holy advice' that is basically just verbatim what my evil demon mental illness brain tells me under a veneer of piety

I KNOW this is helpful to some dispositions and also the bit about pride and knowledge was good! I'm like hell yeah apophatic theology let's focus on good praxis bc we'll never understand the truth of the universe as things stand etc etc

But also. Tldr this is highkey recipe for Mental Illness and is 100% why I have to go exclusively back to gkc and my weird ass mystics (affectionate)