Today I’m thinking about discernment.
In 1521 Íñigo López de Oñaz y Loyola, successful soldier and man-about-town, is finally injured badly in battle: his leg is fractured terribly by a cannonball. Sitting in bed, he daydreams about his future life. All the daydreams are fun and engaging — why daydream about boredom and unhappiness? — but sometimes his fantasy ends and he’s left engaged in the rest of the day enlivened and full of energy, and other times he’s left restless and hollow. After some experimentation and interior observation, he calls the former feeling consolation and the latter desolation; and finds they apply to all sorts of thoughts and actions, memories and plans. He gives the name discernment to the process of paying attention to which things result in consolation and which result in desolation.
Íñigo goes on to have holy visions and attribute consolation to the spirit of god and desolation to spiritual evil. He redirects his life and is eventually remembered as St Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order.
Those additional steps are culturally contextual; feel free to take them if they appeal to you, but they’re not necessary in order to make that initial observation: some things that are nice while they occur leave me feeling empty and hollow afterward, and some things leave me energized and full of delight even after they’re done. Discernment is a functional mental tool outside any religious context.
When my life is going well, and my daily actions are mostly part of larger plans, I don’t feel much need for discernment. I’m taking step 17 of 25 on my way to a goal, and perfectly satisfied. It is when life is somewhat rougher, when there is no plan, that discernment comes into its own. At moments when most actions feel like they will be mostly futile — when it’s unclear if there is any way to achieve worthwhile goals — discernment still functions very effectively at picking one course of action over another. Discernment ignores the ends and judges the means based on what they do internally rather than externally. Even if you’re Bill Murray in Groundhog Day and all your efforts will be washed away like sandcastles, consolation and desolation can provide some kind of compass.
(There is some relation to global motivations here, though discernment is nearly useless for storytelling purposes or team morale.)