Virtue Quest

Where to begin...?

As a sophomore in college, I had a single dorm room. No roommate. A space entirely my own. And I remember that, after the first ten minutes, it terrified me. I don’t think I ever finished entirely unpacking.

I had no one to tell me where my things were supposed to go.

I know that most normal people – you do realize I’m rather abnormal, I hope – would feel the thrill of freedom and the drive to creativity in deciding for themselves where their own things should go. But I was very caught up in a way of thinking limited to “right” and “wrong,” that had no room for “good” and its chums “better” and “best”.

It was actually the required class on Western Civilization that woke me up, or started to. (more…)

I mentioned a little while ago that I wanted to strike up a conversation with my elected officials in an attempt to be a better citizen. The first step, I think, is learning a bit about them. Since I’m not much of a politics wonk, this will take me some time. But I hope that, by January when the new terms of office begin, I’ll have an idea of who they are and what they stand for – and, therefore, what I want to say to them.

My mother, drunk or sober

Here in Washington State, we have a “Find Your Legislator” feature on the website, as well as contact info for our elected officials. I happen to live in north Seattle, which is Washington’s 46th Legislative District (for state offices) and 7th Congressional District (for federal offices). That means the people I’ll be looking up are: (more…)

So I’m afraid I won’t have time to write a proper post.

My friend Jenny, though, drew my attention to the tragedy of the loss of local businesses. There are many causes of this tragedy, but one of the causes is the choices of thousands of individuals to patronize “big box” stores and national chains rather than these local businesses. It’s true that buying local may hit the pocketbook a little harder, but that’s largely because we’re paying something much closer to the actual cost of the goods we’re purchasing.

So, at least consider shopping local whenever you can. Economics begins at home, after all.

It takes practice to look this cool

Anyone who plays guitar (or, as I do, bass guitar,) develops calluses on their fingers where they hold down the strings. It doesn’t take long, maybe a week of playing a little every day; but that can be a painful week, and the strings feel like they’re cutting into the soft flesh at the tips of your fingers. It’s especially bad if you only play occasionally, because any calluses you develop fade away when you’re not playing, so they have to develop all over again.

Whenever I pick up the bass again after neglecting it for a month or so, it’s not just the physical pain I feel. I feel a kind of moral pain, that “I should’ve been practicing all this time.”

But when I do practice regularly, (more…)

A lot on my mind

So the family matter has taken up more time than I expected. Such is life. But I’m adapting, trying to do what good I can with the limited time and energy and other resources available.

And that’s a big chunk of what all of life is about. It’s what I was trying to do when I had a cold. It’s what every business does in making a budget. And someone famously defined politics as “the art of the possible.”

The virtue of prudence is, of course, all about making just that kind of judgment call: (more…)

Keep your eyes on the target

Jonathan Swift said, I think sardonically, “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”

At the same time, there’s a kernel of truth to the saying. My greatest unhappiness has always come from hanging on to unreasonable and unrealistic expectations. I expected that my test scores would be perfect, that my ideas would be hailed as genius, that the girl I liked would instantly fall in love with me and that we’d then live happily ever after.

Taking a reality check

I tend to base my expectations on how I feel at any given moment. If I’m in a good mood, well, I figure everything’s going to go my way. And I get angry if they don’t.

If I’m stuck in a pessimistic rut, I can’t imagine life ever improving. And if it does improve, I’m dead-set on finding something wrong with it anyway. It’s a lose-lose situation.

So I’m trying to develop the habit of checking my mood against reality. If I’m super-excited about something, I take a step back and ask, “What’s realistic to expect in this situation?” And likewise, if I’m gloomy as Eeyore, I stop and remind myself that I really can aim toward something genuinely good.

The trick, for me at least, is to snap out of my current point-of-view just for a moment. I need to remember that I’m not the center of the universe, and that I can’t see absolutely everything that’s going on around me.

What works best for me, usually, is to connect with another human being. Face-to-face is best, but a phone call or even an email or text message will often do the trick. Just saying out loud what I’m seeing, what I want and what the possibilities that I can expect are, helps get my feet back on the ground. And hearing someone else’s take on my situation often gives me new ideas of what actions I can take.

Realistic expectations

There are a couple side benefits of keeping my expectations realistic. First, I’m successful more often when I attempt something. If my view of the situation is in line with what’s really going on, then I can take better actions. It’s like aiming at a target: you’re more likely to hit the bull’s eye if you can see it clearly.

Second, my moods don’t swing so wildly. Success doesn’t send me into a flight of euphoria, and failure doesn’t depress me. In fact, if I expect that I’ll make mistakes from time to time, then I’m actually prepared to fix them and turn a “failure” into a building-block of “success.”

Now, I’m a romantic and a dreamer by nature, so the reality check is not something that comes easily to me. But the more I do it, the more worthwhile I find it to be.

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.

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!

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.