Virtue Quest

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.

Deep thoughts....

Pardon me while I get all philosophical for a bit.

Those who have known me a while know that I suffer from clinical depression. The meds and some good therapy have that pretty well under control; but it’s linked to something that is beyond the scope of medical science. I have a bad habit of asking, “What’s the meaning of life?” or, “What’s the point of it all?” or, closer to home, “What’s the point of my life?”

Yes, I’m a Catholic; and I do buy the whole “know, love, and serve God in this life so that I may be happy with him forever in the next” idea. But it’s an idea: it’s words that I assent to in my mind, but that don’t always reach to my heart, or my gut – which is where those questions of meaning come from. In other words, I still ask, “What’s it mean to be happy with God?” or even, “Why did God make me in the first place?”

The questions “Why?” and “What does it mean?”

A good friend once suggested to me that most people – me included – put much more stock in what something means than what something is, and that this is a backwards way of living life. A person, or an experience, or even an object is only “significant” because it first exists in reality. A relationship has to be lived before it can “mean” anything.

He has an excellent point. I tend to over-think just about everything in my life, and on a cultural level it’s much easier to find “analysis” than it is to find “news.” There’s a certain cart-preceding-horse-ness about this whole approach.

At the same time, the question of meaning is one that just doesn’t go away. And, in terms of “what my life means,” anyway, I’m looking for something deeper than explanation or analysis. But it’s hard to say exactly what it is I am looking for. What am I asking when I ask “why?” or “what’s the point?”

What’s behind these questions, at least for me, is a sort of “what’s worthwhile about it?” or “is it any good?” And I think that’s what “a meaningful life” or an answer to “why?” would entail: I want to see and recognize what’s good about the world, and about my being in the world. I want to know that my life is good.

Not just a moral good

Now, this isn’t quite the same thing as, “I want to make the world a better place.” Of course, I want to be a morally good person: I want to be the kind of person who does kind and loving things, who makes living better for those around me, and so on.

But there’s something that comes first: there’s the very fact that I’m alive, that I exist in the world at all.

Or, in more philosophical terms, is goodness convertible with being? Is existence itself good?

Now, for some people, that’s an absurd question. It’s obvious to them that it’s good to exist. But that’s not universally true. Besides quirky people like me, there’s the whole tradition of Buddhism. If I understand it correctly, Buddhism teaches that existence is an illusion, and that we can escape from the illusion – not into a greater reality, but into nothingness, into not-being. The way to save oneself from suffering is to escape from existing.

And yet, I have real experiences of the goodness of being. For me, being something of a nerd, the paradigmatic moment was sitting in high school chemistry when I suddenly understood the structure of the periodic table. It was beautiful. It was profound. It opened up the world to me. I just wanted to stare at the chart on the wall for hours on end.

I’ve heard normal people describe similar experiences in watching a sunrise, or hearing music. Sometimes, it takes the form of awe at another person. Sometimes it’s falling in love.

The point is, it almost doesn’t matter that I’m there to see it; what matters is that this beautiful, wonderful thing exists. And if the periodic table is good – indeed, if anything at all is good – then that goodness is a part of the real world. In other words, the world has a “meaning,” a “point,” it’s “worthwhile,” at least as far as the periodic table goes.

And if I can recognize it, that recognition is also good. That means that, as far as my ability to recognize something good goes, I am good, worthwhile, and my life has some kind of meaning.

Ditto for everybody else in the world.

Now, this isn’t an air-tight proof that any- and everything that exists is good by its very existence (though I think it’s a step toward that), but it does remind me that the burden of proof lies with pessimism. I have the ability to recognize good in all sorts of things, including myself.

And that’s not bad.

I have this strange fear that I’ll never be able to overcome my failures – that every time I fail at anything, it’s a sort of ultimate failure of myself as a human person. So if I screw something up, even if it’s something that nobody else knows or cares about, suddenly I’m paralyzed and can’t face it. It’s like facing my own demise.

Which is to say I’ve been in a real slump the past few weeks.

I planned to write a post for this site one day, and didn’t. I don’t even remember if I had a legit reason or not. I wanted to again the next day, and didn’t again. At that point, I began thinking that anyone who actually reads the blog would be disappointed in me. And I didn’t want to issue yet another apology for my irregular posting. I really didn’t want to check the site stats and see the drop in readership that happens when I don’t post anything new.

And the days began to pile up. Each day was yet another confirmation of my inability to write, my incapacity for discipline, my utter lack of virtue and therefore my disqualification from writing on this blog at all.

My shrink calls this “all-or-nothing thinking.” My friends call it “perfectionism.” I’m learning to call it a lie.

After all, this blog is a quest for virtue. I wouldn’t be questing for it if I already had it.

The blog isn’t the only thing that’s fallen behind. I’ve blown off phone calls and emails. My bedroom is a pigsty. The laundry needs doing in a bad way. I don’t have any bills late yet, but I will if I wait much longer.

But the obstacles are entirely in my own mind. I simply need to start doing something – pretty much anything even vaguely productive – and 90% of the difficulty vanishes in less than a minute. I just need to face my fear/anxiety/depression/whatever about being normal, being limited, and having a life that doesn’t conform to my fantasies or desires.

I write a lot about knowing reality. Well, more than knowing it, I think I need to accept it. Accept that reality is there, it’s not going away, and it’s not a bad thing. Sure, it’s difficult at times. But it’s also the source of every true love I’ve ever encountered. It’s the only place genuine happiness can exist.

Wallowing in fantasy and wishing and spinning out impossible possibilities leads only to disappointment. I’ve got plenty of experience with that.

I'll just play one more level....

[A historical note: I started writing this post over a week ago... and have only now got round to finishing it. Urp!]

I think I mentioned that I’d given up computer games for Lent. I’m not much of a gamer, as gamers go. Spider solitaire and a third-party version of Risk are my favorites. Never got into the MMOGs. But I’ll be honest, those games can waste hours at a time. That’s plural hours. As in, way too many.

So, that’s a big reason I’ve been slowly growing sleep deprived since Easter Sunday. End of day comes, and I think, hey, I’m allowed my games. And next thing I know it’s 1am (or later), and I have to be up for work the next morning.

Run away! Run away!

Sure, I play games to relax. But it often becomes something more than that. It turns into an attempt to escape from my life.

Not that my life is all that rough. But I am, as I’ve said, a lazy man and I resist any intrusion on my comforts. It quickly becomes a matter of principle: if work takes time away from leisure, then play takes time away from sleep.

Sleep, of course, ultimately takes its time back … usually at the least convenient moment.

All of this could have been avoided if only I’d been a little more disciplined, a little more realistic. I just don’t have all the time I’d like to play and relax and make a fool of myself. None of us do. There’s lots of good in life, but some parts of life are just plain tough, and that’s normal.

Penance and parties

I think that’s one of the lessons of Lent: that part of life is hard work, is difficult, even painful. But the penance leads to a celebration: our work bears fruit, and there’s a greater joy than the mere escape of vegging out with a computer game.

So I’m trying to remind myself of the good things that arise from giving up computer games and other distractions – good things like a full night’s sleep and the ability to enjoy life the next day.

And when I restrict my game playing to times when I really have nothing better to do, I find I actually enjoy the game more. Who’d have thought it?

I have a meeting in St. Louis this weekend, so this morning I had to pack my bags before heading out to work. And I’ve been a bit sleep deprived this past week (more on that to come in a future post), so I’m just hoping that I didn’t forget anything major.

Now, I always forget something. My hope is that it’s nothing important.

I was talking with a friend last night about packing strategies. Mine is, about five minutes before I run out the door, I open the suitcase and throw in anything I can think I might want. Her strategy is to start planning months in advance, maximizing efficiency and comfort, and making sure nothing is forgotten.

I’m just about to grab dinner and head to the airport. But I thought I’d make a note that planning in advance, especially for travel, is a virtue I should think about developing one of these days. Or years. Or whatever. I think it would fall under Prudence.

Spinning wheels, going nowhere ... yet

So here’s what I’ve been doing. It’s kind of working for me, so it might work for others out there too.

As I’ve mentioned before, my big vice is sloth: not just laziness, but a kind of spinning my wheels. Even when I want to do something, I have massive trouble getting started.

For me, I’ve found that it’s easier if I have someone else I’ve made a commitment to. So, for my writing, I have a couple people I’m sending chapters as I finish writing them. They expect them every week. That helps to focus me.

In the rest of my life, I’ve been using schedules and to-do lists. These are great tools, but (like all tools) they only work if you use them correctly. So I’ve tapped the people I live with to help me use them better. Every morning, over breakfast, we go over the day’s schedule. I arrange for a couple “check-in” phone calls at certain key points during the day.

Some days, like today, the schedule doesn’t fit so well. Ironically, it’s because the order of tasks matters more; I have to do X before I can start on Y. That means I can’t just drop X if I’m not done within the hour I’ve put on the schedule. So, the to-do list becomes the more helpful tool.

As you may have noticed, the blog has not been in my schedule for the past few days. I’m working on rectifying that. The blog is important because:

1. It holds me accountable (which is why I encourage comments!)
2. It helps me articulate thoughts I’m hoping to write and publish soon
3. It’s a way of making connections with people I wouldn’t otherwise meet

Therefore, a short post today, and more to come, I hope.

And by the way, thanks to all of you who have written me through the contact page! I appreciate your support!

These past few days have been, well, difficult for me. It’s mostly stuff involving family and friends and colleagues that really doesn’t belong on the internet, so I won’t give details. The result is, basically, I’m stressed and emotionally wiped out.

Taking my emotional state as an excuse, I’ve let go of any number of virtuous habits I’ve been trying to build up. Some examples: keeping my room clean – out; putting work before pleasure – out; writing (both for this blog and for my novel) on a consistent and disciplined schedule – out; getting to bed at a reasonable hour – out.

I’m reminded once again of a phrase from a grade-school play based on “Alice in Wonderland”: I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.

As I look at the wreckage of the past couple days, I’m tempted to think that I’m an absolute idiot and that I know nothing about living well or virtuously. I have no business writing about it here, putting on airs as if I were some sort of authority.

That sort of thinking leads me to: I have no business even attempting a virtuous life, since I’m doomed to failure.

At this point, I hope the lie is clear. The fact is, the only authority I’m claiming is my own experience and the fact that I’ve read some interesting books that some of you may not have read. The fact is, the theory of virtue itself acknowledges that perfection is not a reasonable goal in this life; rather, growth, and progress, and improvement are the goals.

The fact is, failure is no reason to give up. Rather, it’s a call to re-focus. So: my first priority is to get my sleep schedule back on track. When I’m tired, I’m incapable of thinking clearly. Second, start picking up my bedroom, so that my physical environment is less of an obstacle.

And third, (which, oddly, appears first,) I’m putting words on the screen. Maybe they’re stupid words, or simple words; but a writer is one who writes, so the words must come out. As Chesterton says, a thing worth doing is worth doing poorly.

The view from the top makes it look so easy!

More goodness from Pinckaers’ The Sources of Christian Ethics!

Following St. Thomas Aquinas, Pinckaers gives three basic stages of growth in virtue:

1. Beginner / childhood
2. Proficient / adolescent
3. Perfect / mature adult

Each of these stages essentially follows the growth in freedom of a person, and challenges the person to become more free in his or her life. Here’s how each stage works:

Beginning in virtue

The beginner needs to learn how the world works. This is the stage of getting to know – to know oneself, to know one’s abilities, and to know the world and the moral basis of one’s life in the world. The primary work of this stage is learning or, to use a more traditional word, discipline.

Now, it strikes us that discipline is something opposed to freedom, but when the freedom we seek is to live a fully human life, we start out in need of knowledge and in need of practice. Human beings need to be raised and trained and taught.

The goal of education is to lead the child to understand (and the educator must first understand this himself) that discipline, law, and rules are not meant to destroy his freedom, still less to crush or enslave him. Their purpose is rather to develop his ability to perform actions of real excellence by removing dangerous excesses, which can proliferate in the human person like weeds stifling good grain, and by guarding him against unhealthy errors that could turn him aside and jeopardize his interior freedom.

Moreover, this is only the initial stage of growth, just as practicing scales is the beginning and not the end of playing the piano.

Progress in virtue

The second stage involves internalizing the rules by seeing and acting on the reason the rules exist in the first place. It involves a certain testing of the rules – not to destroy them, but to understand them, just as a pianist might try out different formations of a chord or ask what happens when you add this note to it. This is the stage where virtues become, not actions that one follows because they’re imposed, but a kind of “second nature,” an ability that really is one’s own.

Virtue is not a habitual way of acting, formed by the repetition of material acts and engendering in us a psychological mechanism. It is a personal capacity for action, the fruit of a series of fine cations, a power for progress and perfection.

In other words, freedom and goodness cease to be mechanical exercises and become organic parts of us.

Perfect virtue

First off, Pinckaers warns (and I warn with him) that “perfect” here doesn’t mean the end of the road; rather, it means the fulfillment, and the completion of development. Probably a better word for today would be “mature” but St. Thomas used “perfect” so Pinckaers explains what he meant by it.

We can characterize this stage by two features: mastery of excellent actions and creative fruitfulness.

This is the ultimate goal: to be able to do whatever we do well, and to do it creatively. This is what Thomas Edison meant by saying that “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” The virtuous person has gained the freedom and the ability to bring inspiration to reality in spite of the difficulty or obstacles in the way.

This does not mean the end of learning or of growth; rather it means that learning and growth continue almost naturally, without great effort – because the virtuous person has learned how to learn, and has rooted him- or herself in good soil for growth. Virtue has become a stable foundation for the freedom to do what really leads to happiness.

And that’s a goal worth striving for!

What seems to be the problem?

A cop pulled me over the other evening as I was driving home from work.

I had to move into a turn lane so that I could make it to the freeway onramp, and there were a couple cars in the lane with just enough room for me to squeeze in between them. So I flicked my turn signal, checked my blind spot, and moved over.

Immediately, the car behind me – a black, unmarked sedan – flashed police lights and a spotlight right in my rear-view mirror. There was no shoulder, so I turned into a parking lot and the police car pulls behind me.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?” he asked. “You failed to signal for one hundred feet before changing lanes, and you cut me off so that I had to apply my brake to avoid a collision.”

After he let me go, I cruised on home. Driving along the freeway, I kept thinking how I’ve done the same maneuver a thousand times without an accident, and I was pretty sure he was actually accelerating to close the gap I had moved into, and didn’t this guy have anything better to do than pull me over?

But at some point it occurred to me that the officer was in fact correct. I had broken the traffic law. And he had every right, even an obligation, to pull me over.

For the record – or, thankfully, the lack of one – he let me off with a warning.

Now, this didn’t stop me from driving about five over the speed limit on my way home. And it didn’t make me call the police station to confess my every traffic violation. But it did remind me that I am not the standard by which the law should be set. I’m an ordinary schmoe, and I make mistakes, and I cut corners when I think I can get away with it.

Even so, the law reminded me that the road is a dangerous place, where I’m skimming the concrete at sixty-five, surrounded by two-ton juggernauts of aluminum and steel that are flying by at least as fast as I’m going. So I did drive a little more carefully.

And, meanwhile, I’m trying to be more open to correction in every part of my life. Because, just as on the road, I’m not always right. I make mistakes. I cut corners. I don’t always get away with it – and thank God! If there were never any consequences, I’d never learn from my mistakes, and I would hurt my friends much more often than I already do.

Time to get up

I’d been having a pretty good month, till about the middle of this past week. I’ve been waking up on time, getting work done, keeping in touch with friends, praying regularly, and so on … but little things slowly began to slip. So, I haven’t really made my bed since Wednesday. I came in late to work a couple days this week – only a couple minutes late, but definitely late. And these past couple days off, I’ve spent more time watching telly and playing computer games than reading or writing, which is what I had planned to do.

The demon despair

Now, my tendency when I find myself slipping into bad habits is just to give up the fight.

That’s because I’m (first) lazy and (second) a coward and (third) prone to depression. Big whoop. I know plenty of people who can identify with those vices, and I know I’m not alone. But that doesn’t make it okay.

So, the question is, what to do about it. How can I overcome the temptation to despair?

I think the first step is to recognize that this isn’t just a minor foible. This is self-destructive behavior in a very literal sense. Despair is just a non-committal form of suicide, and I need to recognize it as a real and present attack on my life and happiness.

Doesn’t matter that the attack comes from within. I need to recognize it as a threat, or else I won’t meet it with the right attitude.

The monk’s solution

I heard a story once about a guy who walked past a monastery every day, always longing to be like the monks inside but thinking he wasn’t holy enough. One day, he met a monk who was sweeping the sidewalk. He asked the monk what he did in the monastery.

The monk said, “We fall down, then get back up. We fall down, then get back up.”

I always thought of that as a smarmy way of saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” But I’m starting to take it a little more literally: think of a boxing match. If you get knocked down, you stand back up. You struggle to your feet by whatever means necessary. If you don’t the fight is over. You’ve lost.

I’ve read enough works by mystics to know that “spiritual warfare” is not just a metaphor for them. I think it can’t just be a metaphor for me, either.

A declaration of war

Therefore I’m declaring war on my vices. I may not win, but my plan is, like Galadriel, to “fight the long defeat.” Or like Rocky, to “go the distance.”

After all, virtue is not about perfection. It is about excellence. It is about settling for nothing less than one’s best.