Dissipation

I love words. And as a lover of words, the English language is a feast. We are inveterate borrowers of words from other languages and have been for centuries. Perhaps the word “thieves” is better than borrowers. We seem to continue to use “déjà vu” and do not appear to have any plans to return it to the French. In English there are lots of words to love and many of them aren’t even English.

Words also have meanings and connotations that change over time. The one that struck me today was dissipation. I read it in this context: “But watch yourselves lest your hearts we weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you like a trap.” (Luke 21:43 ESV) Here dissipation is used in the slightly old-fashioned sense and is grouped, at least in my mind, with phrases such as “a life of dissipation” and with little-used, disparaging words like roué, cad and blackguard (this latter pronounced “blaggard”, it being English and the letters not mattering all that much to final pronunciation).

The dissipated life is one of carousing and carelessness. The coupling of dissipation with drunkenness in the text might even be considered a redundancy. Drunkenness and dissipation are perhaps twins not separated at birth. But perhaps we should separate them because one’s life might be dissipated even if one is stone cold sober.

If you think about the word, dissipate, in a different context, as in when a strong odor dissipates, you get the idea of what it means at its core. To dissipate something is to scatter it in many directions. In that sense one might dissipate a fortune on wine, women and song, as the prodigal son did. Perhaps this is why the twins are so often together. But, thinking further, dissipation is when something that is strong and concentrated in one place becomes diffused. It makes me wonder how diffused and scattered I may be.

I am, very often, weighed down with dissipation. My focus is on a hundred things (90 of them might actually be good things) but I am dissipated. What is strong and concentrated is scattered, wastefully, on many things. And in that scattering my clear attention and focus is gone. Ask my children, they will tell you. I miss what is most important; what is coming. That He is coming. And the day will upon me like a trap.

It is unlikely that I will become drunk today but highly likely that I will become dissipated by the raging pace of this daily life.

Unless I heed Jesus warning to watch myself.