We're trained to divert ourselves from seriousness. Our society is built on distraction which is an expression of nihilism and despair that underlies a culture which thinks that because there is nothing to be gained or understood, all that we can do for a dying animal is to offer it a few pleasures between the meaninglessness of birth and death.
This condemnation to distraction is very difficult to overcome. Anyone undertaking the seriousness of the spiritual quest will have to fight strongly against it. Active laziness gives us every excuse not to sit down to pray, not to meditate, not to give to our relationships the kind of work that they need.
— Andrew Harvey, Dialogues with a Modern Mystic by Andrew Harvey, Mark Matousek