“Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.”

- Charles Baudelaire

For Christians, this time of year is right in the middle of Lent. When I was growing up, I remember lots of my friends giving things up for Lent – usually chocolates or sweets. It’s a tradition that comes from a story in the Bible, where Jesus spends forty days in the desert fasting, praying and resisting temptation from Satan. Many other religions have their own times of fasting and prayer - like Ramadan, and Yom Kippur.

But over time, people have started giving up other things for Lent, besides food. These days, you’ll find people giving up TV, or video games or shopping. The idea is to break our bad habits, and refocus our attention on deeper, more profound things.

‘Going without’ has become a bit of an alien concept, these days. If anything, we’re constantly being bombarded with advertising that’s designed to persuade us to buy more, eat more, drink more, consume more. Only the environmentalists are trying to convince us to make do with less.

When you have too much of a good thing, stops being special. If you have cake every day, for example, it’s not a treat any more. Going without once in a while reminds us how much we have.