🌼🌺 Acedia and Joy 🌼🌺
Acedia is an ancient word, but its presence feels unmistakably modern.
Traditionally described as a kind of spiritual apathy, acedia wasn’t simply laziness—it was a quiet disconnection from meaning, purpose, and the sacredness of being alive. A dulling of the spirit. Today, we often call it something else: burnout.
Burnout can feel like exhaustion that reaches beyond the body. A numbness that touches the soul. It shows up when life becomes something we push through, rather than something we are in relationship with. When we lose connection not only to ourselves, but to the deeper, spiritual dimension of life—the part that gives us meaning, belonging, and a sense of wholeness.
It can feel like life is happening to us—demands piling up, energy draining away, and a gradual loss of sovereignty over how we live and who we are becoming.
At Wild Plains Medicine, we do not see this as something to push through or ignore, but something worth paying attention to. We see this not as a personal failing, but as an invitation.
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An invitation to notice where we may have given our power away. Where we have stopped choosing, and instead slipped into enduring. Where the spark of joy has been replaced by obligation, pressure, or quiet resignation.
Joy, in this sense, is not fleeting happiness or forced positivity. It is a spiritual orientation. A conscious choice to engage with life as something meaningful, even when it is complex or challenging. It is the practice of remembering that we are participants in life, not just passengers.
Choosing joy does not deny the challenges we face. Instead, it restores our agency within them. It brings us back into relationship with life, where meaning can be felt, purpose can emerge, and peace becomes something we cultivate from within.
We can’t always change what’s happening around us, but we can choose how we meet it.
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Join Caroline and Brad for circles and workshops nationally in Australia:
https://www.facebook.com/WildPlainsMedicine/events
Image: AI generated, as to support an inner feeling, but living like that is too tough 😆