Live lightly for Lent

Feb 20th, The Guardian

This week, as February draws to a close, I find myself wondering, as I do every year, what I can give up for lent that will feel worthwhile and meaningful. It's not that I am seeking some vain, glorious sense of achievement from my lenten observance, it's just that in the past I have found the whole experience rather empty and lowering in a way that did not feel very spiritual at all. Finding a course of action that in any way corresponds with the forty days and forty nights that Jesus spent lost in the wilderness with no food at all, being tempted by the Devil, is no mean task. But during Lent I do like to choose a way of living that means I require rather more of myself than usual and I've already tried all the obvious things.

Giving up drinking makes me feel more self conscious when I go out so I am more humourless in my dealings with others. It doesn't seem right that they should suffer. Giving up anything sweet is worse.. Because, like many women, I spent much of my teenage on vicious crash diets where you were allowed ninety nine grapes a day, or eight cabbages, or just three cornettos (only 765 cals!), self denial and I have a difficult history. For me, any kind of deprivation is inextricably associated with being at a very low ebb. I have too much self confidence to practice it now. Besides, while no one could claim that swearing off buns to look slinky in a bikini is a bad idea exactly, it isn't especially profound.

As Ash Wednesday approaches conflicting thoughts crash through my head. Is all kind of self improvement spiritual? Is all kind of self improvement just an adjunct of human vanity? Suddenly everything seems so complicated and I rather envy the child I heard at my niece's school who announced reasonably, 'I've given up ketchup for lent-but not on chips!' A priest at a busy central London Catholic church told me recently that Lent isn't a time for tackling problems of overeating or excessive drinking. Those require professional help. It's a time for living more simply, for alms giving, for serious reflection, for gratitude and contrition and above all for preparing for the feast of feasts which is Easter. 'Why not give up reading the newspapers,' he daringly suggested, 'and read the gospels instead? Or perhaps you could skip your weekly restaurant meal and give the money to a good cause.'

A year ago, just before Lent, I went to a funeral where it was pointed out that the deceased had never said anything nasty about anyone in his life. Inspired by this I decided that for the entire Lenten period (I am not someone who takes Sundays off) I would not say anything unkind about anyone. I made my plan carefully. I wouldn't be allowed to criticise or find fault with friends and family in any way. I could not be disparaging about others' outfits or houses or spouses in conversation, and I was also to try to avoid doing so in my thoughts. If I was in a situation where friends were being critical I had to withdraw if I was able, or otherwise keep quiet. It was not that I go in for making nasty remarks any more than the next person, but I am very analytical by nature and I had fallen into the habit of endlessly discussing the minutiae of other peoples' lives with anyone who was prepared to listen. This was a bad habit which I was ready to leave behind. Also, although I am not a hugely resentful person I am blessed with a perfect memory and remember all the conversations I have ever had. This includes each insult, every slight and all the backhanded compliments.

It was time to approach every meeting freshly, without sour memories or carefully hoarded littled wounds bristling in the back of my head. I didn't want, 'She wasn't great with names or faces but she never forgot a grudge', announced at my funeral. In the six and a half weeks that followed I gradually found all sorts of good effects stemmed from my resolution. Almost immediately whenever I felt the urge to be critical about a person I switched to thinking of all the nicest things they had ever done. It did not seem right to place a high value on the good qualities in my friends and family if I was going to be devastated when they proved themselves to be human. I had worried that my resolution would make me bad company but in fact my sunnier outlook was contagious. I was hardly bitter and twisted before, but during this time someone in passing actually referred to me as being 'easy-going'.

Of course I had my slips. There were grey areas. Sometimes I presented my negative view of things as well reasoned unarguable facts, when my husband considered them to be just pesky opinions. He became a master of the discreetly raised eyebrow. 'You'll see me on Easter morning' , I warned him, 'stomping round the house on a cursing and fault finding spree', but when the time came I forgot all about it, and as I lay in bed eating my chocolate there was no nasty taste in my mouth at all.