You know, I'm Catholic and I've thought for a very long time that the act of "giving something up" for Lent was a silly one which was a pointless physical representation of the mood of the season. I felt things like not eating meat on Friday held no real meaning and ultimately had no importance to what Lent was really about. "Suffer with Jesus" I think was the predominant meaning behind it that I had picked up. I thought that was stupid because not eating meat or even fasting for a day was not suffering, and giving up something like candy or whatever people gave up as kids when I first began coming to this conclusion was hardly suffering compared to the historical suffering that Jesus of Nazareth went through (whether you believe he was a meaningful person or not, he did exist and he was crucified). I thought to myself, "religion is not about vague symbols such as 'Jesus was a fisherman so we eat fish on Fridays.'"
Well, without getting into details, let's just say that after about 8 or 9 years of not giving up things for Lent, I recently came to the realization (mostly thanks to a particular class I'm taking) that the explanations I had always thought of and heard as a kid (or remember hearing at least) have absolutely nothing to do with it and the reasoning behind all of it is far greater and more reasonable than I had ever thought of. Needless to say, unfortunately, even going to a Catholic gradeschool it's difficult to get a good education on the Catholic faith or religion in general even. It's difficult to get it anywhere really. And the amazingly unfortunate thing is that even if there were many outlets to get good educations on different religions, I really don't think one can possibly really understand it until they're older...and even then it's not necessarily true.
Anyways, I figure I'll give up caffeine/pop for Lent. I drink way too much of it, so why not. It's bad for me anyways.
