Virtue Quest

How can you mend a broken heart?

So there are a couple people in my life that make lots of bad decisions. (I don’t think they read this blog, but I won’t name names anyway.)

I’m not talking about decisions I disagree with, like choosing the creme brulee when there’s chocolate mousse on the menu. I’m talking about undeniably bad decisions, like burning bridges and painting yourself into a corner.

It’s hard to love someone in that situation, for two reasons. First, their bad decisions put up obstacles to receiving love; and second, I just stop wanting to love that person.

The limits of love

To love is to will the good of the one you love. (more…)

Friendship is the language of love

The very first thing Thomas Aquinas says about the virtue of charity is that it is friendship.

Now, when I hear the word charity, “friendship” isn’t the synonym that leaps boldly to the front of my mind, ready to spring from the tip of my tongue. The first words that come to mind, if I’m in a good mood, are words like “altruism” or “benevolence;” if I’m in a less, well, charitable mood, words like “handout” come to mind.

If I’m thinking more philosophically, I might come up with words like “care” or “good will” or “love, in a rather specialized and technical sense.”

But friendship? Nah, that’s just too … too what? Too personal? Too practical? Too simple?

Aspects of friendship

When it comes right down to it, it’s almost as difficult to define friendship as it is to define love itself. But there are a few clear aspects of friendship that Thomas draws on when he explains why charity is friendship.

First, friendship requires a good will toward another. That is, we want what is good for a friend, regardless of whether we get anything out of it ourselves. As Thomas puts it: “For it would be absurd to speak of having friendship for wine or for a horse,” because these are things we use to fulfill our own desires, rather than doing good to the wine or the horse.

Next, friendship has to communicate. We can’t just claim a friendship with someone we don’t have any real connection to; rather, our friends are the ones we actually interact with. This may seem painfully obvious, but it’s foundational to the idea that charity – because it is friendship – can never be simply one-sided.

Finally, that communication has to be mutual. Thomas isn’t talking about some kind of tit-for-tat equality of exchange; he means that friends have to be able to share something in common, to communicate the same kind of thing to each other. In other words, the reason we use wine and horses to fulfill our own desires is exactly because the wine and the horse is incapable of receiving or responding to friendship as an equal. A relationship with wine or a horse is necessarily one-sided.

This is the kind of friendship that describes the virtue of charity.

Yeah, but…

What about when one person is a better friend than another? Where’s the “mutuality” in that?

And what about that Christian command to love your enemies? An enemy, by definition, isn’t going to be your friend!

The answer, I think, is as close as our ordinary way of talking about friendship: so-and-so is a better friend, or is my best friend, or is not a very close friend. Sometimes this is because of circumstance: it’s harder to be friends with someone across the country than with someone I see all the time. But it’s also because of a person’s ability to be a friend.

Charity is a virtue, after all. It’s both a gift we receive, and a skill we need to develop. So the more I practice desiring and seeking my friend’s good, the “better” a friend I will become.

As for enemies, if they absolutely refuse to reconcile and become friends, then Thomas notes that we love them because God loves them, and if we love God we love also whatever and whomever God loves. We don’t have to be buddy-buddy with them, but at least we should avoid getting in the way of them loving in whatever way they are able to. And we still can and should do our best to defend ourselves and others from their attacks: they will never grow in love if they succeed in their acts of hate.

Merlin Advises Arthur - by Gustave Dore

The 1967 film version of “Camelot” formed a great deal of my childhood, and still stands close by me today. Indeed, I remember in the 1980′s seeing Vanessa Redgrave in a contemporary film and being shocked because I knew her as the lithe young Guenevere. And I dearly loved the hyper-emotional Richard Harris in every role he played (he was magnificent in “Gladiator” in part because of the resonance between young Arthur and ancient Marcus Aurelius).

But perhaps the most powerful scene, for me, is the one where Arthur goes hunting in the woods, and reminisces of his youthful training under Merlyn (played by Laurence Naismith). Arthur asks Merlyn, “What’s the best thing for being sad?” and Merlyn replies, “The best thing for being sad is to learn something!”

Now, I’ve discovered a number of other things that are good for being sad, and, although things like sitting and talking with a close friend and doing something productive are also very good when I’m sad, I’ve never found anything that would definitively displace Merlyn’s advice about the very best thing for sadness.

Sadness and learning

I’ve had to rely on all these methods over the past week or so. The cause of my sadness has been a number of small, personal events that don’t really need talking about (though it began with that car accident I wrote about last week). But when friends were not available and work was just too difficult, I could always learn something.

I’ve been reading voraciously in Thomas Aquinas’ First Part of the Summa Theologica, specifically what is known as his “Treatise on Man” in which he describes human nature.

What is wonderful about this is, not only was it good learning, but it helped me understand why learning is a solution to sadness.

According to Thomas, humanity stands at a crossroads of creation: we are both material and spiritual beings. That is, we are physical (like stones and shrubs and squirrels) and also intellectual (like angels and God). This puts us at a unique place in the universe, and this uniqueness extends to how we understand (intellegere, in Latin) and how we act.

We do not act in the same way that other animals do, because they are guided by sense and instinct, while we are guided by reason. And we do not understand in the way that pure spirits do, because they apprehend truths directly, while we move from known to unknown by reason. Reason is the unique feature of human nature that sets us apart from everything else in creation.

Sadness (as an emotion, not as the vice of sloth) is an indicator that something is missing from our nature. So when an animal is sad, it seeks something to heal or restore its body (including its emotions). I’m not sure if an angel can be sad, but if it were it would seek something to return it to its direct apprehension of truth and goodness and beauty.

If a human being is sad, the answer lies (at least in part) in reason. The core, the “heart” as it were, of being human is to understand things by coming to know what is unknown. So in sadness, we seek to understand why we are sad, and then to know what we can do about it.

In other words, we learn something.

Even when knowing the source of some particular sadness eludes us, even then learning something brings a kind of healing and restoration and even growth. This is because our nature is (in part) to learn, and any time we learn anything we are fulfilling our nature. We become more happy when we learn because we become more ourselves.

Beyond learning

I said that our nature is in part to learn; that’s because our nature is also to act on what we have learned, to put our knowledge into deeds.

That’s partly what I’m doing here: I’m attempting to share something that I’ve learned with others. But it also means taking action to work better, to play better, to love our friends and family and neighbors better. The more we learn, the better we can act toward others. And, as if in reward, the more we can learn from those we love.

It is not good for a man to be alone with a computer

Yesterday was my day off from Working for the Man this week. I slept in a bit, read some of my favorite blogs that I haven’t read for a while, watched some TV, and played a lot of those addicting online games – the stupid ones that aim as much at making you laugh or grossing you out as they do at challenging your skill.

Never mind that my room was a mess, and I had unopened mail piling up on my desk, and I had three different articles I wanted to write and/or research, and… you get the picture.

I didn’t shower till 4:45. Yeah, that’s P.M.

Stopping the vice of sloth

Call it laziness, call it procrastination, whatever you like. Among the seven deadly sins, it’s known as sloth or (for the etymologically minded) acedia. The closest twenty-first century word might be, depression. In any case, it’s the despair of anything in the world having value. And it gives rise either to doing nothing, (because nothing’s worth doing,) or compulsive activity, (because you’re distracting yourself from your fear of worthlessness.)

Anyway, I was supposed to go to a lecture on Greek culture last night with a friend (yes, I’m a nerd; get over it) but instead I asked her to come over and sit with me while I tried to get my life back on track.

It wasn’t until I had someone else there, someone to get me out of my head and the whole spiraling cycle of unanswered questions, that I was able to actually do anything.

Replacing vice with virtue

So what did I do? I mostly got my room cleaned.

Kind of an aside: I find my mental state often manifests itself in my physical state. If my thinking is muddy, I tend to let my room and general surroundings devolve into chaos. The external disorganization reinforces the internal messiness, and sometimes the best way to reset the mind is to reset my surroundings. That’s why I focused on cleaning my room.

I’m still behind on the unopened mail, but it’s within the realm of possibility now. By shifting from doing something bad to doing something good, I’ve taken a step in the right direction.

And that’s a step I couldn’t have taken without my friend’s help.

How a friend helps

My friend didn’t take much action. She helped me fold up my bedspread, and then sat and laughed at me while I scurried around my room throwing junk from one pile into another.

But she was there.

I’ve said many times that virtue is all about taking action appropriate to reality. In sloth, I was caught up in fantasy, an endless stream of “what if’s” and “why’s”. These are questions that can’t be answered by statements or by thoughts. They are questions that need to be answered by actions, by engaging the real world.

My friend, by being there, reminded me that there was a world beyond the confines of my skull. And that’s exactly what I needed yesterday.

So, Tammie, thank you very much!