Seven Deadly Sins: LUST

Lust is considered an overwhelming desire in the body brought on by an emotion or feeling. While most notorious in the form of sexual desire, Lust can take on other forms, like a Lust for power or food. The key to this sin is that the feeling drives one to excess, but on how much is too much is up for debate.

The range on what is considered excessive and therefore lustful is pretty wide. On one side of the spectrum we have the desire to have sex at all, or even second glances at a person of the opposite sex as being considered lustful. On the opposite side we have Lust as being considered not a vice at all. So as you can see there's a lot of room for interpretation on this one.

As with all the other sins that deal in excess, this sin can lead to a great deal of trouble. However, the virtue of Chastity can help with that problem. Chastity is simply abstaining from certain behaviors that are considered amoral in by your religion's or society's standards. Again, what that is depends on where you're from and what you practice. For sexual desire this is considered in most cultures as abstaining from sexual practices until marriage, practicing courtly love, and romantic friendship. For the other Lust types it is simply the use of moderation.

This sin is third least on my totem pole of sins mostly because I'm still unsure of what constitutes as Lust in my eyes. My upbringing has been one that I've been exposed to an array of differences on what has been constituted as lustful. By one extreme's standards I am certainly considered lustful, but by the other extreme I'd be considered overly modest. I also do not consider myself too prone to excess when it comes to want of power, food, and other things. So with Lust being foggier than the other four ahead of it, it is listed at number five on my list of deadlies.

Hopefully you all have your own idea of what Lust equates to. If you do, what do you consider to be lustful? Do you feel that this sin is one that you fall prey to? Or are you doing fine regarding this particular sin? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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Seven Deadly Sins: GREED

Greed is a fairly straightforward sin. It is the desire to possess wealth, goods, or objects of abstract value for yourself to an excessive degree, far beyond what you actually need. It is considered a sin that when indulged there is no satisfying it, leaving you frustrated and never truly happy with what you have. This is true both of those who seek the material, and those who try to be excessively moral, social, or better than others.

Greed, though found throughout society, is generally looked down upon, and has great consequences. People who have a great deal of Greed often find themselves without true friendship, and feel isolated from the rest of the world. Eventually these people can no longer sustain the sheer volume of items they possess, or deal with their impulses, and fall into ruin.

Greed is the sin that is combated by Charity. This is not the modern day charity as it includes generosity, self-sacrifice, and unlimited love. It is doing for others without expectation.

I consider Greed to be my second least as far as the seven deadly sins are concerned because from time to time I do find myself a little on the greedy side. This usually happens in the case of small things, thankfully, and generally isn't hard for me to stop the urge. My position as the middle child in my family has helped to foster my mentality as sharing comes quite naturally. I genuinely don't have the desire for excessive amounts of things (well... except maybe books). So as long as I don't become a serious bookworm I should be okay.

How do you interact with Greed? Do you find it a little harder to not hoard things, both physical and abstract? Or is this sin not really your thing? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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Seven Deadly Sins: ENVY

Now most of us have heard the phrase "green with Envy", but what is envy exactly? Envy is a resentment, one that occurs when someone lacks another person's quality, achievement, or possession and wishes that they could have it instead. At least, that's the most traditional way of looking at it. Nowadays in psychology there is thought to be two types of envy: a malicious one and a mild one. 

The malicious version is where you want what the other person has, exactly what they have, and that they will no longer have it. Imagine a kid taking away another child's toy. However, the other version is where you want to have what that person has, but don't wish to take it from that person. That would be like seeing the toy and then going and asking your parents to buy it for you.

Envy is rather rampant in today's society, and is fought off by the virtue of Kindness. The kind of kindness that brings about charity, compassion, empathy, and friendship. So if you usually have a positive outlook on life and are cheerful you are far less likely to fall victim to this sin.

I consider this to be my least of the seven deadly sins because I tend to have the demeanor above. I prefer to share, and enjoy things together rather than to lord over others. The one area where I feel I fall short is achievements due to the fact that they can make me competitive. While competition is not necessarily a bad thing, it can lead you to bad places if you're not careful. Thankfully this doesn't happen that often to me though, so for the most part I can rest easy.

So how do you relate with Envy? Do you struggle with it a bit more than I do? Or is it not a big one for you? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction

Say hello to the Sinful Rainbow! In it is each color that is usually associated with one of the seven deadly sins. We've got red for Wrath, orange for Gluttony, yellow for Greed, green for Envy, light blue for Sloth, blue for Lust, and violet for Pride. So it's almost like a regular rainbow, except you won't find gold at the end of this one. Nope, just what has been considered some of humanities worst traits.

Okay, all silliness aside, the reason I'm bringing up the seven deadly sins is because the next several blog posts will be about them. I will go into detail about what they are, what they mean, and how each one impacts my life personally. However, I'm not going to introduce them based on their assigned color, but by the severity of how they affect me.

Note: I feel that each of these traits touch each of us at varying times, and that none of us are completely without them. As such you won't be automatically damned, but as these aren't actually good qualities to have you should try your best to overcome them.

Now that that disclaimer is out of the way I will show you the list of how I will post them.

Starting with the least...

Envy

Greed

Lust

Pride

Gluttony

Wrath

Sloth

... and ending with the most.

So that's the line up. Through this segment I hope you all will gain a better understanding of what the seven deadly sins are and what they mean to you. Perhaps then you can make your own list (and maybe share it in a comment if you want).

Park Adventures

Today started out with my mom, younger sister, and I going to the doctor's. My sister has stomach problems and needed to go in for a test to see if they could find out what was wrong. After getting the test done we decided that today would be a good day to go to the park. Originally we were going to go to one farther away, one that we've been to before and liked. However, one of the ladies suggested a different one that was much closer that we'd never been to. So we decided to head that way.

After picking up some Subway we made it to the park and stopped near a picnic table. While eating our subs, mine was a turkey one, we observed the lovely trees and the squirrels that inhabited them. There were tons of squirrels out: brown ones, gray ones, and black ones. One in particular was interesting as it tried to drop a nut on my head. Thankfully it missed.

After lunch we took a walk through the wooded area of the park. Not only were the leaves lovely, but a lot of the trees were wonky shaped and neat to look at. The mushrooms too! There were a surprising amount of mushrooms out in several shapes and sizes. It was really cool.

There were also stations throughout the park that you could stop at for exercise. One place that we stopped at was one of the playgrounds, but it had an Eiffel Tower like metal rope structure. My sister and I climbed it, but it was somewhat difficult. The gaps between some of the ropes were so big that you either needed some decent upper body strength or longer legs. Thanks to mine being long I was able to get to the top, but I'm not sure a young kid would've been able to get up there.

Another one we went to was vaulting. I was the only one who tried it, which I managed successfully. However the chin up station none of us had the strength for. I hung up-side-down from the bar instead. After I was done I realized someone else was using the equipment, a spider. Not your normal, everyday spider either. His body was tiny, but his legs were long! Longer than any daddy long legs spider I've ever seen, and  I've seen tons of those. My sister was trying her luck at that point so I made her aware of our little friend, and she slowly backed away from it.

We took lots of pictures of the neater looking trees, collected a few sticks for our dog, and all in all had a great time. We've vowed to go more often, which I'm looking forward to. And... that's it. Until next time!

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Project Side Table is Officially Over

Finished with the side table! Yay! But what was going to go in my blog post got deleted. Boo. :(

So we'll just show you the lovely end result and skip all that went into making the magic happen. Hope ya'll don't mind. I just don't feel like retyping nine paragraphs of description all over again. So...

BASK IN THE GLORY THAT IS MY SIDE TABLE! DO IT NOW! O.o

Being Productive!

Today I did two major things that I've been holding off on. Yay productivity! The first was repainting a painting that was painted over a piece of art that I bought for my older sister many eons ago. It goes like this, some time ago my older sister said she wanted to paint over 2 of her run of the mill from Walmart pieces of art. They were nice in their prime, but now were chipped, and didn't really click with her style anymore so I understood why she wanted to do this. Me being the painter in the family she asked if I would tote my stuff over to her place, and there she and I would repaint the pieces of art. As payment for my materials she'd let me keep the one I did.

However, I wasn't exactly thrilled with what I'd made in the end. It was cool enough, and people really liked it, but I wasn't happy with it. So about a week later I tried to do something else with it and painted over it. Things... didn't go well. So I re-primed the sucker and left it alone. Until today. Today I decided to work on it. I also decided that I'd make a painting where I didn't have as much control over the end result as I usually do. It was fun and I really like the end result. I did not, however, enjoy having to scrub the excess paint off the cement (as I decided to paint outside).

The second thing I did was finish sanding my end table. Let's step back a few months to explain the end table. A neighbor of ours two doors over was moving out and was getting rid of an end table. They had set it out to the curb a few hours earlier, and when my family and I were walking our dog we saw it. My mom and sister didn't really give it a second glance but I wanted it. So after asking the neighbors about it (just to make sure they were really getting rid of it and not selling it or something) my little sister and I brought it into our garage.

Once I told my big sis about it and said that I wanted to re-stain it she got all excited and helped my obtain the materials I needed to do the job. Well today I finally finished sanding the beast. At least the initial sanding. I'm not sure if more is needed or not. I'm waiting for my sister to get here so I can ask her what my next step is. Regardless I'm happy with the amount of progress I've made.

No pictures of either project yet (getting out my bulky camera is a pain and I'm being lazy right now) so instead I've leave you with this octopus.