Day 209 - Seven Story

Seven Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

They called it ‘Living the Seven.’ It was a club with a highly exclusive membership. They made a commitment. They took an oath. They took the Seven Deadly Sins to heart and agreed to live by them through and through. They each belonged to a particular sect and embraced one more than the other six, but still they agreed to abide by them all.

Originally it was an experiment among friends, just to see if it could be done. There was some debate as to which seven sins to use. There were several variations throughout history and the words and the meanings changed a little bit each time. The ancient Greeks had eight. For a brief moment they considered making it more of a pagan experiment and embracing an entirely different set of stands, but finally decided it would probably be best to use the modern Christian definitions.

A study showed that the most commonly admitted sins were pride and lust. Whether or not that was really the case was up for debate, but they were what people would admit to. It was agreed to therefore spend more time focused on the other five, just to make sure those got their just due.

‘Living the Seven’ proved to be a more difficult task that expected. On the surface it seemed like a simple idea. All one had to do was embrace their darker evil thoughts and more base desires. Or at least that was what they thought would happen. They thought it would be liberating. They thought they would be free. Free to do anything and try anything they wanted. It seemed as if it would be one grand experiment of excess and indulgence.

There were difficulties deciding just what ‘Living the Seven’ really meant. Did someone have to be angry all the time? Lustful all day long? How would it even be possible to perform some of the sins on a continual basis? It seemed physically impossible to do. It was agreed upon that they would simply indulge their desires when any situation presented itself where their instincts told them not to. In that way it became a challenge to defeat oneself. Their head would tell them one thing, reason would tell them one thing, and they would have to ignore it. They would have to force themselves into doing the opposite. That is quite the challenge and not all that easy a task to perform. ‘Living the Seven’ basically created a state of constant conflict within. Living in a state of constant struggle didn’t create the sense of freedom or hedonistic pleasures that had been expected or desired. It created a lot of anxiety and ulcers and psychiatric bills.

‘Living the Seven’ became a trap. It was addictive at first because everything was a rush and full of excitement. It became a mess later once the energy wore off and they were left with a cold and empty reality. They lost their ability to relate to each other. They lost their ability to relate to strangers. They lost their ability to relate to themselves. But once they had ruined themselves and their lives, they seemed to have lost the ability to go back. There was so much psychological dehumanizing damage done, it was hard to find their way back. So most of them remained on the other side. Most of them became this new and strange thing, full of hate and envy and spite. They hated and loved and loved and hated. There was a great deal of disgust for themselves and for other people. Instead of being able to have unlimited freedom to do anything, they had found themselves without the ability to do anything at all. Their worlds got smaller and smaller as they lost all interest in their own lives or improving themselves. There was no hope and without hope there was nothing done or created or tried. They were lazy and horrible people.

‘Living the Seven’ was the worst choice they could make and it wasn’t really living. It was more like a slow painful dying. But calling it dying just didn’t sound like very much fun at all. Nobody really wants to think about slow painful dying or terrible addictions to the world’s worst behaviors. There was no point in reminding them what they had chosen to do. They found no point at all. They had nothing except their own emptiness.

But it was sort of what they wanted. It was sort of what they had been after. Deep down they should have known just how much they hated life and been honest about it. They knew what path they were embracing. They knew the depths that path could lead to. They shouldn’t have been surprised. And yet, people always are. They never see, until it is too late, and sometimes not even then.