Virtue Quest

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.

Just get it done

One of my friends describes her life as “the daily grind.” She’s worried that she doesn’t have the joy or enthusiasm for things that she used to. She feels tied down, restricted by the work of just maintaining stuff in her life: job, home, relationships, and so on.

My experience is totally different: I’ve been bouncing all over the place so much in the past few years that I’m soaking up stability and regularity wherever I can find it. It’s comforting to me to punch the clock at work, to have a morning routine, to do things like fill the car with gas or hit the grocery store on the way home.

But I have some distance from the chaos of the last couple years, well, I’ll probably get tired of the daily grind myself. And maybe my friend will find some new inspiration in her life.

The only constant is change

The trick is to find some way to happiness, some way to excellence, regardless of mood or life circumstances or whatever. And this is where virtue comes in.

Virtue is constancy in the midst of change.

Virtue holds up the goal, the ideal, the good, and shows the path to strive for it. The good, happiness, never changes; even though the way to pursue it often does.

Sometimes it takes courage; sometimes it takes self-restraint. Sometimes it means stepping back to a more objective distance; and sometimes it means jumping into immediate action.

Sometimes virtue is sticking with a person through thick and thin, even when you don’t feel like it. And other times, virtue is making a change, even when you’re overwhelmed by fear.

How to know the right thing to do

It’s easiest to see right and wrong in the rear-view mirror: hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. But there are a few things we can do in the moment to make better decisions – even if they’re not always the best:

1. Know the goal: take some time regularly to sort through your priorities. Check your list with someone you trust. Give yourself a clear, concrete image of what you’re aiming for
2. Take inventory: before making a difficult decision, look around and double-check the facts of the situation. Ask if there’s anything you’re missing. Ask if you’re assuming something that isn’t really there.
3. Listen to your heart: if something feels very right, or very wrong, there’s got to be a reason for it. Look for that reason. Don’t dismiss it.
4. Follow your head: your heart can give you good information, but it makes lousy decisions. Leave the actual decision to your reason. Ask yourself how you can move toward your goal, toward happiness, toward excellence, in this situation here and now. And, if you’ve gathered all the facts, trust your reasoning. Do what you have concluded is good, no matter how you feel about it.

For me, it’s the last two that always are the hardest. My feelings cloud my thinking; or my thinking pushes down my feelings. But I keep trying to learn from my mistakes, to go back and try to do better next time. Even small progress is better than no progress at all.

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!

What I usually look like in the afternoon...

My doctor tells me that it’s not uncommon to feel drowsy in the mid-afternoon, and that either a little snack or a bit of exercise is a decent alternative to a nap. For myself, the soporific tendencies begin around 3:00pm, and a snack will at best delay the lowering of the eyelids.

But today has been a particularly productive day in a number of ways. I solved a tricky network problem for my uncle’s insurance business, reviewed my parents’ taxes from last year in preparation for filing this year’s, finished reading Book IX of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, and accomplished a few other little household tasks.

By three in the afternoon, I was certainly feeling sleepy, but I also wanted to keep rolling on this productivity streak. At the very least, I wanted to write a blog entry … but I knew if I sat down at my computer I’d sooner or later drift off into the Land of Nod.

Prudence to the rescue!

So I took stock of my situation. I was sleepy, but not really tired; I wanted to get some more work done, but didn’t have the energy. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t even feeling particularly lazy, for once!

Moreover, I’d just been talking with my mother about the taxes, and I knew that both she and I were trying to incorporate exercise as a regular part of our lives.

So I asked her, “How about a walk around the neighborhood?”

As we walked, she asked about this blog and I said that I was planning to write today about the relationship of prudence and justice. I described prudence as the virtue of being in touch with reality, with one’s place in that real situation, and making decisions in accordance with one’s nature.

And it only occurred to me at that point that I had used exactly that process in deciding to ask my mom to take a walk with me.

An action and then a habit

For a long time, I’ve been thinking about prudence, thinking about how to practice it, thinking about how it fits in with the other virtues, thinking … thinking …

Today is the first time I’ve actually caught myself being prudent. I don’t think it’s bragging to say that I’m happy about it. After all, it’s a fairly small act of prudence, and it’s still a long ways from being “second nature” to me. But every action helps to build the habit; and I’m going to remember this little action when I’m faced with future temptations to nap or to do anything else that avoids facing the real world.

After all, I know that I can do it, at least in a small way. And if I can do it, you certainly can as well!