The Case for Deprivation: Finding Fulfillment in Self-Restraint

Self-governance is not merely a political ideal but a personal necessity, and the greatest tyrannies are often those we impose upon ourselves through our ungoverned appetites.

Here’s a curious paradox of the modern world: We have somehow convinced ourselves that the path to happiness lies in the ceaseless accumulation of pleasures rather than in their occasional and deliberate abdication. It is the paradox of the man who cannot understand why his stomach aches when he has eaten seven meals instead of one, or why his mind is troubled when he has filled it with a thousand fragments of information rather than a single coherent thought.

The modern man stands bewildered in the center of his supermarket of delights, wondering why the abundance that surrounds him has left him so curiously empty.

The practice of giving things up for Lent—that ancient and, to the modern mind, somewhat barbaric practice of voluntary deprivation—stands as a magnificent rebellion against this error. It is not, as many might imagine, a relic of medieval superstition or a symptom of that dreadful disease called "repression." It is rather a recognition of that most fundamental of human truths, which is that we are creatures who must govern ourselves or be governed by our appetites, and that the latter form of government is the most tyrannical imaginable.

Self-discipline is not, as is commonly supposed, the negation of the self but rather its assertion. When a man says "I shall not eat this cake," he is not saying "I hate cake" or "I hate myself," but rather "I am more than my desire for cake." He is asserting the tremendous truth that there exists within him something greater than his appetites, something that can stand apart from them and govern them. He is, in short, asserting his humanity in its fullest sense.

The monks of old who retreated from the world, not because they hated it but because they loved it too well, understood this with a clarity that we have lost. When they fasted—and fast they did, with a rigor that would make our token Lenten sacrifices seem like indulgence—they were not engaged in an exercise of self-hatred but of self-mastery.

They knew what modern science has only recently rediscovered: that the body, like a willful child, sometimes requires discipline for its own good. The intermittent fast cleanses and renews, stripping away the accumulated toxins of excess and restoring the body to its proper function. It is as if the physical form itself recognizes the wisdom of occasional emptiness.

But the effects of fasting, and of Lenten sacrifice more generally, extend far beyond the merely physical. Simply put: voluntary deprivation tends to transform the soul. The man who has learned to say “no” to himself has learned the first principle of saying “yes” to life. He has discovered that freedom is not the absence of constraint but the presence of the right constraints, self-imposed and self-governed.

The tradition of Lent asks us to give up trifles—a glass of wine, a sweet dessert, the idle hour on social media—yet through these small sacrifices teaches us something tremendous: that we are creatures of will as well as appetite, of spirit as well as flesh. The ancient wisdom of Lent, like all true wisdom, contains a paradox: in giving up we gain, in acknowledging our limits we discover our freedom. This is the wisdom of those who understand that self-governance is not merely a political ideal but a personal necessity, and that the greatest tyrannies are often those we impose upon ourselves through our ungoverned appetites.

Self-governance is a truth embedded not in changing cultural fashion but in unchanging human nature. It requires the recognition that freedom worthy of the name involves not merely doing what one wants but becoming the kind of person who wants what is good, not simply following desire wherever it leads but cultivating desires aligned with reason, virtue, and purpose.

Michael S. Rose, a leader in the classical education movement, is author of The Art of Being Human, Ugly As Sin and other books. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications including The Wall Street Journal, Epoch Times, New York Newsday, National Review, and The Dallas Morning News.