Our life is full of choices. Full of choices. Moment by moment, we have choices: what we're going to think about, what we're going to do and not do. A good and holy life depends, largely, on making very deliberate and wise decisions. Not just the big long term decisions, but the immediate, little ones. One of the consequences of the fall, and our mortality (and really, the permeation of death in all creation, one of the most insideous consequences is really our lack of ability to focus. We are distracted. This is perennial for all of us. There is an inner dividedness, this aimless wandering, even in our thoughts. It's hard to know what we are to do.

This is the source of a lot of woe in this world. This problem is so serious, in fact, that the entire apparatus of the liturgical and devotional life (of which Lent is part) has been constructed by the Church, in the Spirit, to deal with it.