Virtue Quest

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.

Some practical insights from The New Haven Register: Make the new year a clean, fresh start.

And, credit where credit is due, Peter Singer also advises Aristotelian practicality and realism, as opposed to Platonic mind games.

This may be the last time you ever see me recommend anything by Peter Singer, whose sole virtue seems to be his logical consistency. But, being the main voice of the “personal consent as the sole criterion of goodness” camp, I cannot respect his premises. The good is not something I make up in my mind, or that I simply “prefer”. What is good is based on what is. Being precedes goodness, and defines goodness. A rock and a snake and a woman and an angel, because they have different natures – different ways of being – have different goods; but they all share the fundamental good of fulfilling their actual objective nature.

In other words, a diet of all ice cream all the time will make you fat and miserable, no matter how much you “like” ice cream. And murder kills, not only another human being, but your ability to relate to other people – no matter how “worthy of death” you may deem your victim.

An article – really more of an advertisement – on Psychology Today’s blog makes a great recommendation:

Why not commit to making love your New Year’s Resolution?

Of course, their idea of “love” is saying “I love you” to your spouse at least once a day. That’s hardly a bad thing but, as we all know, actions speak much louder than words.

All love is a gift

More than a feeling

Almost everyone I’ve ever talked to about love starts by remarking that love is an action, not a feeling. I mostly agree, but I think it’s important to remember that love is intimately involved with feelings. At the very least, it’s much easier to take the actions of love when one feels the affections of love.

But love is not merely a result of our feelings; it can also be a cause of our feelings. I’ve noticed that, when I interact with … how do I put this gently? … people to whom I have little immediate attraction, I have to consciously decide to act lovingly toward them. No surprise there; I suspect most of us do. But, as so many advocates of volunteering point out, I find I often receive more than I give when I choose to give love in difficult situations.

The greatest gift I receive is insight into what is good, what is lovable, in this person – the person I at first had little or no inclination to love.

In other words, by acting from love, I begin to feel affection. There’s no real dichotomy between acts of love and feelings of love; ideally, they reinforce one another.

Love and charity and sexy sexy sex

What I just said above sounds very noble and “Christian.” And, in many ways, it is. But another false dichotomy is between this “charitable” love and what I’ll call “romantic” or “erotic” love. You know, LUV! Valentine’s Day love. “C’mon over here, baby!” love.

Do these really have anything in common?

Josef Pieper, whose book Faith, Hope, Love I’ve just finished reading, suggests that there are two things that all forms of love (including charity, erotic love, friendship, and so on) all have in common: First, affirmation; and second, union.

Affirmation means seeing, acknowledging, delighting in, and making known the beloved’s good. So, if you love chocolate, you delight in its flavor. If you love your spouse, you delight in his or her personality and body – and, moreover, you delight to remind him or her of your joy.

Union means participating in that goodness that you affirm. Again, if you love chocolate, then you unite that chocolate to your taste buds. And if you love your spouse, you make yourself a part – a participant – of his or her whole life. You also try to contribute to his or her good: you help when needed, you provide support and even advantage wherever possible.

Essentially, the “charitable” act of doing good for someone – friend or stranger or lover – opens up new possibilities for affirmation. And affirming the good in another provides opportunities to unite yourself to them.

Resolving to love in the new year

So, as I said, the Psychology Today advice is not bad: saying “I love you” every day is an act of affirmation. But it’s not just for one’s spouse, and it’s not just for words.

To really be more loving, all I need to do is remember to look for the good – either good that’s there, or good that I can bring about – in every person, every situation I encounter. I have some friends who put a note on their refrigerator reading, “Treat Theo [their 3-year old son] kindly”. The reminder might be that simple: a note on the mirror or the hand, saying, “Treat others with love today.”

Look for the good. Act on it.

The wheel of time turns round again...

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.

I think this is the instinct behind such things as new year’s resolutions. I know that the ending of one calendar year and the beginning of another is arbitrary. It is no more significant, in and of itself, than a birthday or a full moon. But it brings with it a number of opportunities to make a fresh start.

Financially, for example, the calendar year and the tax year coincide. So it provides a good opportunity to make some major changes in working or spending habits.

Or, there are opportunities for re-connecting with family and friends; Christmas and other holidays have just passed, and most people are thinking fondly – or trying to, anyway – about friends and relations.

And then there is the whole self-improvement culture: already there are countless people trying to make this year the year when they’ll lose some weight, learn Chinese, get on top of the housework, or whatever. This provides a strong social support, and maybe some direct accountability, for making a few changes.

Balance and virtue

In my experience, what causes all these resolutions to fizzle out before January is through is the lack of balance. As the Bene Gesserit wisdom admonishes us, if the beginning is out of balance, the rest will topple over easily.

Here is where the virtues come to the rescue: a little prudence now, in deciding just what changes to make this coming year, will make it clear what actions are truly just (and, for that matter, loving) and will prepare us to act with courage and/or moderation when needed.

Prudence, remember, is the virtue of recognizing what the situation really is, and what my particular place in that situation is; it is the virtue of being in touch with reality.

The first step of prudence is to look at the practical, concrete, feet-on-the-ground situation. Here’s mine, in a nutshell:

• I have a temporary, part-time job that doesn’t quite cover all my expenses
• I’m therefore somewhat financially dependent on family, but I’m not homeless or starving
• I have the luxury of free internet access and affordable transportation
• I have some very good friends who care deeply for me
• I’m free of any major debt
• I have a ton of ideas for articles and stories, but have so far lacked the discipline to complete them

How I plan to grow in virtue next year

So, based on the situation, it seems to me that I need to man up and act with a little more self-discipline this coming year. I need to focus on finding full-time employment so that I don’t have to mooch off the fam. And I need to focus on putting the time and effort into research and writing. (These fit in nicely, actually, with last year’s resolutions: pray, learn, serve.)

Grand ideals! Now, how to do it? I think I’ll use a few primary tools that have worked well in the past:

1. Make a schedule
2. Be accountable to a friend
3. Expect progress, not perfection

The schedule is itself a tool of prudence: it’s a concrete look at the situation and the needs of each particular day. The accountability to a friend acknowledges that I’m pretty weak in the self-motivation category; it’s easier when I know that someone else knows my goals and successes and failures. And keeping expectations realistic should cut off the elation of a new idea as well as the despair of a failure.

So, I plan to grow in virtue, mainly in prudence, by practicing prudence. I invite you to do the same!

A New Year's Toast

About a year ago, I wrote a post about New Year’s resolutions on another, now-defunct, blog. The truth is, I’d been debating whether I should repost it here, and I’ve been afraid to because (like so many people) I didn’t really keep my resolutions very well. But a friend asked me about the post, so … here ’tis. It’s a reminder of where I was a year ago, and of the kind of progress I still want to make.

A quick disclaimer: the other blog was more explicitly aimed at my fellow Catholics than this one is, so in the post my assumption was that the readers were or knew something about Catholics.

For the Church, today, the First Sunday of Advent, is the beginning of the new year. It is also a penitential season, a time to repent, reform, and renew. Which puts me in mind of a more secular tradition: new year’s resolutions.

I’m going to make a new year’s resolution, and I’m going to begin now, at the beginning of the Church year. This is my resolution: to grow in my life in Christ. This resolution has three simple parts: pray, learn, and serve.

And I invite anyone to join me in this resolution. Grow in life with Christ: pray, learn, serve. After all, this is what we should be doing as Christians anyway.

Now, as for me, I know I’d fail by tomorrow morning if I left it as vague as that. So here are some concrete steps I’m going to take to fulfill this resolution.

Pray. I’m going to schedule half an hour of private prayer every day. I’m putting it in my schedule so that the time is protected, and so that I don’t come up with excuses to avoid it. I know myself well enough to know I’ll take any excuse I can find.

Learn. I’m going to read through at least one article of St. Thomas’ Summa Theologica every day. St. Thomas is still regarded as the most comprehensive theologian in the history of the Church, and he has a certain pride of place in the Dominican order. And moreover, he has a way of surprising me every time I read him closely. This will be a good way for me to make sure I’m growing in my knowledge of Christ.

Serve will be a bit trickier, since most of the Christian life can be seen as some kind of service. But the part I struggle most with is time management: I spend time I should be working for other people on distracting or entertaining myself. So I’m creating a fairly comprehensive schedule for myself, to hold myself accountable to actually spending my time serving other people. I’m also making sure that my leisure time is protected, and plan to use it in truly recreational activities — but more on recreation vs. distraction in another post.

In short, I’m focusing on one simple way I can improve my prayer, my learning, and my service. It won’t make me into the perfect Christian, but that’s not my goal right now. My goal right now is to grow in my life in Christ. Maybe I’ll grow more than I’m laying out here; but at least I’ll do this much. And I will trust that God will use all my efforts — and even my failures, since I know I’ll fall short from time to time — to draw me deeper into his life.

I’ll try to reflect on how it’s going for me over the course of the coming year. And I’ll welcome comments from you if you decide to join me. I’m doing it now, but maybe you’ll try it at some other point: for Lent, or starting on your fortieth birthday, or whenever. Just remember, the goal is simple:

Grow in life in Christ.

1. Pray
2. Learn
3. Serve