Virtue Quest

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.

I hate to give an unconfirmed quotation, but the sentiment is apt. My spiritual director told me that someone once asked Robert Frost how he became such a great poet. He answered:

The first thing I do in the morning is to make my bed.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found a reliable citation. Even so, it’s worth noting that great virtue has its seed and root in small virtue.

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!

So far, this has got to be my favorite line from Aristotle’s Nichomachian Ethics:

The self-indulgent man, as was said, is not apt to repent…. (VII.8)

Ah! How true! But then, is there any hope for me?

Temperance, self-indulgence, and incontinence

Aristotle is contrasting the self-indulgent person with the incontinent person. Here’s the difference: while both are intemperate, that is, both pursue pleasure or avoid pain to excess, the incontinent person is either overwhelmed by desire or is just plain thoughtless; the self-indulgent person, on the other hand, has made a deliberate decision to pursue pleasure or avoid vice in some excessive way.

The incontinent person just grabs that extra chocolate on impulse; the self-indulgent person decides that a diet of chocolate is really what’s best for him.

Now, Aristotle says that … well, I’ll let him speak for himself:

Now, since the incontinent man is apt to pursue, not on conviction, bodily pleasures that are excessive and contrary to the right rule, while the self-indulgent man is convinced because he is the sort of man to pursue them, it is on the contrary the former that is easily persuaded to change his mind, while the latter is not. For virtue and vice respectively preserve and destroy the first principle, and in actions the final cause is the first principle.

Okay, maybe he’s not entirely clear. Here’s how I read it. The incontinent person knows he has done something wrong, but the self-indulgent person is convinced of a lie: that he is acting rightly. So, it is easier for the incontinent person to admit wrongdoing and to take steps to reform his behavior (such as keeping the chocolate under lock and key) than it is for the self-indulgent person who sees no need for reform.

This is because the whole goal of virtue is to bring us in touch with reality, while vice is wrong and harmful exactly because it distorts or denies reality. (That’s roughly what Aristotle is talking about with the whole “first principle” stuff.)

Repent! Repent!

I think one of the reasons this line caught my attention was because I so strongly associate the word “repent” with religious preaching. But Aristotle is using it in its basic meaning: to feel sorrow (or penitence) for what one has done. And this sorrow is the foundation of a “change of mind”, which could also be translated by another word with religious overtones: conversion.

And yet, this is exactly what Aristotle suggests: if you’ve done something wrong, be sorry and change your behavior. Don’t make excuses. Don’t beat yourself up, either. Just keep in touch with reality, and try to correct your mistakes.

Because, while this means feeling sorry every so often, it also leads to a fuller and deeper happiness: the happiness of being fully human, fully yourself.

If only I could remember that every time I pass the candy dish….

You do remember Tetris, don’t you?

Of course you do. Those blocks keep coming, faster and faster… at a certain point I would just give up and let them stack like a skyscraper. But apparently there were Tetris experts who could play for twelve hours straight! Cuh-ray-zee.

So I was thinking about how to explain the process of building a habit, and it was Tetris that came to mind.

The blocks don’t stop!

In real life, as in Tetris, new situations keep appearing and they have to be fit into life as it is, whether we like it or not. There’s no choosing what shows up on the horizon. And there’s no stopping it. Life will keep coming at us, at a steady pace of twenty-four hours every day, for the rest of our lives.

But, there are ways to deal with it, to keep from being overwhelmed, even to use the strangely-shaped situations that life throws our way to the good. It’s like clearing a line in Tetris: when we arrange the different parts of life into the proper order, they cease to cause problems.

And, as we practice arranging our lives, we get better at it. Maybe we even begin to see new “problems” rather as “opportunities” to fill a gap, or to discover a new way of ordering life.

Perseverance is a virtue

Now, I’ve already mentioned that, in playing the game, I eventually give up out of frustration. I have to admit that I’m tempted to do the same in my life. I have friends who always get going whenever the going gets tough. I admire them tremendously. For myself, I tend to avoid the situation, to procrastinate, or even to hide.

That’s because, at root, I’m basically a coward. And perseverance is a kind of sub-virtue of fortitude. It’s the courageous act of facing every obstacle as it comes, no matter how many obstacles there are. It’s the refusal to surrender in the face of ongoing adversity.

Growing in perseverance

So here’s what I’m doing to overcome my cowardice: I’m setting a schedule. I’m pacing myself. I’m writing a to-do list, and putting the tasks in order of priority. In short, I’m taking a little time to strategize, to arrange my life as it exists, and to plan out where those incoming events can fit into it.

But just as importantly, I’m giving up the fantasy that someday it will all become easy. I think that’s the ultimate root of my fear: I think that life ought to be easy, and I’m frustrated when my dreams don’t arrive on a silver platter.

That is a lie. It’s time to face the fact that, whatever I might want, life will keep coming at me. I can’t put the game away; it’s not a game. But I can start looking at life as a series of opportunities rather than as a series of problems. I can look for how new situations can fit into some kind of order – even if it’s an order I hadn’t planned on.

If you want to find new ways to bring order to your life, too, please join the quest for virtue! We can learn from each other, and grow together!

Yesterday, I answered Sarah’s question by saying that virtue is a good habit. That’s pithy and fits neatly on a bumper sticker; but it’s not nearly the whole story. I wrote a little about it being good, but today I want to write about virtue being a habit.

Rinse, and repeat!

I’ve heard various theories on how to form a habit. Some say, repeat an action for thirty consecutive days, and it will become a habit. Others say, repeat an action one hundred times, and it will become a habit. Others give variations with different numbers. But all focus on the repetition.

Now, I’ll grant that if you do something the same way enough times, you’ll develop a kind of habit: a sort of physical habit, like a proper golf swing – or so my dad tells me. But I don’t think this is quite the kind of habit that makes a virtue. Nor do I think it’s the easiest way to develop a habit.

Purposeful repetition

In my own experience, the ways I’ve developed habits most quickly and easily all have one thing in common: I had a strong sense of purpose when I repeated the action. When I was in the habit of daily exercise, there was a particular girl I wanted to impress. Now that I’m not trying to impress her, my habit of exercise has slipped away.

This cuts both ways. In fact, it helps explain why I develop habits of vice so much more quickly than habits of virtue. When I eat that extra bowl of ice cream, mmm! I get an instant affirmation of how nummy ice cream is. Meanwhile, when I’m trying to develop virtuous habits, I need to constantly remind myself why I’m doing it.

All you need is love!

I didn’t choose the example of trying to impress a girl at random. I was in love, and that love motivated me beyond myself. That is, after all, what true love will do: move me to some good beyond myself.

The trick, then, to developing virtuous habits is to fall in love with the results of virtue. Maybe it’s just to remind yourself of what it is you most love. Maybe it’s to draw out the connections between some virtuous action and the object of your love.

What I’m trying now (and I’ll let you know how this goes) is to listen carefully to the people I love most, and who love me best. I’m listening for what they think I’m doing well, and what they think I need to improve at. I’m doing this because I’m awfully good at convincing myself that I’m just fine, or that I’m utterly worthless. My friends give me a reality check.

Because that’s another thing love does: like every virtue, it puts me in touch with reality.

If you want a little help from some friends, join the quest! I know that we will grow more together than separately.

Wait a sec. Haven’t I been saying that virtue is a process that grows over time as you put in diligent practice and repetition?

Yup.

So what’s this “Instant Virtue” all about?

The Enemy: Procrastination

Here’s the thing: one of my greatest vices is procrastination. Never put off till tomorrow what you can put off till next week, I say.

So, if this is a vice I want to overcome, how do I practice the opposite virtue?

Procrastination is, at root, either intemperance (because I’m following false pleasures) or cowardice (because I’m afraid of difficulty or danger.) Now, I’m guilty of both of these; in fact, in me, I think they’re two sides of the same coin: I’m afraid of losing some false pleasure that I want more than reality.

The Weapon: Action

The opposing virtue, then, is temperate and courageous action. But me, being such a self-indulgent coward, I need to start small. Really small. Let me give you an example.

I need to put my dishes in the dishwasher as soon as I’m done eating. Granted, the effort is minimal, and the time spent is minimal, but for some reason I’m in the vicious habit of leaving the pasta sauce or the egg whites to dry and harden – which just makes those dishes harder to clean up later. So I need to take immediate action, both to grow in virtue and to increase true pleasure in my life.

I also need to fold or hang up my clothes when I take them off at night. At present, I tend to let them drop onto the floor or (if I’m particularly concientious) hang them on the back of my chair. This, of course, results in wrinkly clothes and a lack of wearable items when I’m most in need. And, if I’m honest, it’s truly rare that I’m so very exhausted that I can’t fold my trousers up.

Instant Virtue Over Time

I’ve already started building these good habits. I’m far from perfect: I have a sweater and a jacket sitting on the floor right now. But I’ll pick them up as soon as I’m done writing this.

But even in the week or so that I’ve been working on this, it’s helped me to pay my credit card bill on time, and to return some phone calls and emails promptly, and so on. I’m still a newbie grasshopper, but I’m already better than I was. I’m doing what needs doing, when it’s easiest to do. And that is a great start toward virtue.

If you want to start making progress down the path of virtue, please join the quest! We’ll make this journey together!

I’m currently reading through Aristotle’s Nicomachian Ethics, which is one of the foundations of all Western ethical thought. And I came across the following (Book VII, Chapter 5):

For every excessive state whether of folly, of cowardice, of self-indulgence, or of bad temper, is either brutish or morbid

He goes on to explain that “brutish” means that a person is acting more like an animal (a “brute” beast) than like a human; he gives the example of a man who is afraid of a mouse. Stereotypical, perhaps, but then again…

Now, why fear of mice is particularly “brutish” is beyond me. I might speculate that “cheesy” would be more apt, since the object that has most reason to fear a mouse is a round of cheese. But that’s just me.

Anyway, Aristotle also says that “morbid” means that a person is acting contrary to their own life, giving the examples of people who tear their hair out in anger, or chew their nails in nervousness.

So, seems to me that he’s saying: excessive states, aka, vices, involve either acting like something that you’re not or acting directly against yourself. Or, to put it positively, virtue involves acting like yourself.

Virtue and Nature
This is the key to understanding virtue as a way of life: that we need a certain training to act like ourselves, to act according to our own nature. Acting naturally doesn’t come easy. Indeed, we consider “natural” to be a high complement: when an athlete runs well, when a politician speaks eloquently, when a co-worker accomplishes a task with ease – in cases like these, we often say, “They do it so naturally!” They are fulfilling the potential of their nature.

A more telling phrase is maybe, “second-nature”. Many people have described the virtues in just this way, as developing a way of acting that is almost instinctive. But unless this “second nature” is in harmony with the first nature, with what it is to be human, then it becomes a vice.

Angels and Animals
Now, I often find myself swinging to one of two extremes: I tend either to indulge my merely physical (bestial?) appetites for food or rest or pleasure; or I tend to ignore my body and focus on my mental activity, as if it were somehow purer or higher. It’s sort of the dumb jock vs. the clumsy nerd. Or, in more classical terms, the beast vs. the angel.

Well, I’m neither a beast nor an angel. I’m a human being, a strange and incomprehensible combination of mind and body, of soma and psyche. Which means that the nature I’m striving for will involve improving every part of me, everything that really belongs to being human. Nothing left out. But also, no unrealistic expectations.

I should not try to soar like a hawk; I will crash. I should not try to escape into some abstract or ethereal plane of spiritual purity; I neglect myself if I neglect my body. But I can, and should, use my mind to guide my body towards health and wholeness. I can, and should, explore the kinds of things that my mind and body do well together as a unit – in other words, the things that I do well, the whole me. That is the goal of practicing virtue.

I don’t know about you, but for me the biggest hurdle to any task is taking the first step. It means work. It means sacrificing some freedom or pleasure. It means change. So here I am, at the beginning of developing virtue in my life, and I’m shaking in my socks.

Am I really going to change my life?

Will it really be for the better?

At this point, I usually make the wrong move. I stop and try to answer those two questions. I worry about whether I’ll be able to stick to my committment, or whether I’ll give up when the going gets tough – like I have so often in the past.

Or I sit around trying to figure what the odds are of the change really being worthwhile. I stare into the future with more intensity than any poker player staring at an opponent’s hand – but with much less insight.

The thing to do is simply to do something.

Anything at all. I just need to get off my buttocks and act. So for me the first step on this road to virtue is hitting the keys and putting out this blog.

Maybe for you it’ll be something different. Maybe it’ll be picking up that pair of pants you threw in the corner last night. Or perhaps it’ll be to pick up the phone and call your mom. Or it might be to drive over to the gym tonight after dinner.

In any case, do something. Something is always better than nothing. Something is a real start.

Otherwise, the questions will simply answer themselves.