@philosophyminis: It's the early afternoon, and you find you're just staring at the screen. You're not sad. You're not tired. You're just utterly, totally, fantastically unbothered. It's as if the world itself has become flat and grey, and you can't motivate yourself to do anything. The fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus called this feeling acedia, and it's called the 'noonday demon.' Acedia is a specific curse, normally around mid-afternoon, when time seems to change beat, and the world seems to warp in and out. It's when you refresh the same tab 11 times, and check your emails without actually reading them. It's when you say, 'Come on,' to yourself over and over again, and it never works. Evagrius gave two solutions to this. The first was to ask monks to resist the urge to escape, but to do one more thing, do one more task. Say one quick prayer. Eat a small bit of food. Do something small but productive to break the icy spell. Second, Evagrius suggested that we should divide ourselves into two. There is one listless self that is staring at the screen right now, but there is also a self that kind of knows this is acedia. It recognises the noonday demon. Lean into that voice, and appreciate it a bit more. Motivate yourself to overcome the demon's power. For Evagrius, acedia is not beaten by inspiration, chemical enhancement, or even divine intervention, but by patience. It’s when we encourage ourselves, we wait a bit longer, and we do one small thing over and over again until the demon is beaten.

Jonny Thomson

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Region: GB

Wednesday 15 July 2026 15:01:54 GMT