Not Easy, but Worth It

The easy life is surprisingly hard to find satisfying.

In an age that optimizes for comfort, the most countercultural thing a young woman can do might be moving into a monastery.

As Shira Telushkin documented in “The Improbable Revival of the Cloister,” traditional contemplative orders are seeing a surprising surge of interest. In these communities, sisters pray the full divine office, wear traditional habits, and renounce travel, comfort, and family life. As one nun described the young applicants, “These women want something heroic.”

And they’re finding it behind walls most people would call confining. Sister Rosalie Agnes, twenty-three, said, “I figured if I was going to do something crazy for our Lord I may as well go all in.”

There’s something fascinating about this. A generation accused of being soft, distracted, and addicted to screens is producing women who voluntarily embrace centuries-old austerity — not because it’s imposed on them, but because they freely choose it. Telushkin calls it “the ultimate act of defiance.”

And here’s the twist that confounds our comfort-obsessed logic: they report feeling more free, not less. They aren’t enduring hardship as some grim transaction. They’re on an adventure — one that demands everything and, in return, offers something the world couldn’t.

We spend enormous energy avoiding difficulty, only to discover that the emptiness on the other side is its own kind of prison. These women figured that out early. Many of us are still scrolling.