On Desensitizing Ourselves

No matter where we are or who we are or what we are or how much help we have, we have to do some part of the solving of our problems for ourselves. We have to have the will and the willingness inside ourselves.

And this we say in face of the fact that there sometimes seems to be a tendency to desensitize people in a sense, physically, morally, mentally⎯sometimes almost seeming to be a seeking to evade rather than seeking to solve. Sometimes we expect too much of the place and too little of the person. Seeking to escape routine and reality may, in moderation, be desirable, but overdone, could seem to cause some question⎯as, for example, when people perennially play at play harder than they work at work. Yet work itself is one of life’s surest satisfactions and one of its surest shock absorbers.

And now to another side of the subject: In the search for evasion there is sometimes a resorting to the use of substances which lead to a dulling of the senses, the dulling of thinking, of judgment, the dulling of physical reflexes⎯and even the dulling of the acuteness of conscience. “There is nothing that a man can less afford to leave at home,” said Richardson Pack, “than his conscience or his good habits.” To which we would add, there is nothing that he can less afford to reduce to lower level, by any means, than his conscience, his good habits, or his sense of real responsibility for his own actions.

The Lord God gave us an awareness of ourselves: physically and mentally and spiritually⎯and that which He gave us should not be abused. He expects of us a reasonable effort, a reasonable use of talents and intelligence and opportunities, a reasonable self-control, a reasonable meeting of every hour. He expects of us an earnest, patient doing, and enduring, and a reconciliation with reality, and not, generally speaking, too much of lowering of our awareness or, in a sense, the desensitizing of ourselves.

“There is nothing that a man can less afford to leave . . . [behind] than his conscience or his good habits.”