Tag: patience

Habits of the Heart

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

The title comes from a book by Sociologist Robert Bellah.  It is a good description of virtues. I am starting a new blog series about virtues, which will be interspersed with my more usual focus on holidays and culture and occasionally even economics.  I discovered virtue ethics in seminary, and it helped me understand the limited focus of traditional ethics, which is how to determine what is the right thing to do. Utilitarians want us to do what offers the greatest good for the greatest number.  Kantians urge us to follow an ethic of duty, which my ethics students reduced to the question, ”But what if everybody did it?”  (lied, stole, littered…). Armed with these two tools, ethics challenges people to make decisions that honor one or both of these principles.

But something was missing.  It was the question, “What makes people want to do the right thing?” The answer to that question lies in virtue ethics.  Or as Alfred B. Newman might have said, “Why be good?” And the answer from virtue ethics is, because you will be happier, have more friends and better relations, and the world will be a better place—especially if everybody did it.

The Greek word that Aristotle used, arete, is sometimes translated as virtue, but a more accurate translation is excellence. He believed that every virtue/excellence lies at a golden mean between its opposite and its extreme.  Courage, for example, lies between cowardice (its opposite) and foolhardiness (its extreme).  He also believed that the cultivation and exercise of virtue should lead to a richer and more meaningful life for the individual, the community, and society at large. 

There are lots and lots of virtues.  Auguste Comte-Sponville, a French ethicist, listed seventeen.  Aristotle had at least that many. But Aristotle focused on four that he considered primary, two for private life, two for public life. I’m pretty sure I’m not as smart as Aristotle, but I do have several millennia more of human experience to draw on in expanding his brilliant insight. Three spheres, not two—the individual, the community, the world..  And the virtues we require are, as Aristotle observed, different for those three sphere’s:  personal virtues, relational virtues, and civic virtues. 

Personal virtues are those qualities of character that make it easier to live with ourselves. Aristotle offered only two that were primary for our personal lives: prudence (wise management of resources) and temperance or moderation.  I would add diligence, patience, mindfulness. and self-awareness. Unlike relational or civic virtues, these six qualities of character primarily benefit us personally and directly in living richer, more meaningful and satisfying lives.

A prudent person is neither careless nor obsessive in the use of money and other resources, but gives it due attention, rather than hoarding or extravagance. A moderate or temperate person avoids the extremes of self-indulgence and asceticism. A diligent person is neither a goof-off nor a workaholic. A patient person avoids both endless procrastination and obsessive insistence on doing it NOW. A mindful person pays close attention to what she is doing in the moment, rather than focusing on the future or the past or being easily distracted. A self-aware person is cognizant of his gifts and strengths, limitations, and weaknesses, avoiding the extremes of pride and self-abasement. 

That’s a pretty comprehensive list.  I tend to be both impatient and easily distracted, so I have work on patience and mindfulness. I also need to work at self-awareness. On the other hand, I am reasonably prudent, moderate in most things, and generally diligent at carrying out my personal responsibilities.  At least, that’s what I think I am.  Periodically I need to check with friends and family members to see if they affirm or question my self-assessment!

Having identified my areas that need improvement, I am working on mindful eating, avoiding multi-tasking, and meditation to become more mindful. I have been keeping a journal for at least 25 years, and I have a friend whose task it is to find them and burn them when I die, because they are a tool for my self-awareness, not a record for future generations. As for patience, other people are pretty good at reminding me to slow down and let things unfold at their own pace.

How about you? That’s your ‘homework” for this week.  Which of these six personal virtues are your firmly established good habits of the heart and which ones could stand some work?

Sometime in the near future, expect Installment #2, when we will take a look at virtues that matter in relationships. (Patience gets a second chance there!)

The Turning of the Year–Resolution #2

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

Patience is a virtue, except when it morphs into procrastination.  I am pretty good about not procrastinating (all right, maybe emptying the litter box, according to my cat) but I do find myself drawn to impatience, its opposite.  Impatience is living in the future, whether it is waiting for Christmas, or the kids to grow up, or the workday to end, or the new president to be inaugurated.  The grass is always greener in the future (especially since I am writing this blog at the winter solstice!).

The spiritual practice that is the best known cure for impatience is mindfulness.  Mindfulness is the practice of living in the moment and doing one thing at a time, a foreign notion to the familiar modern American world of multitasking and planning ahead.  I eat breakfast while writing in my journal and drink my tea ( a recent switch from coffee to reduce my over-stimulation) while reading the morning paper.  I cannot watch television without something to occupy my hands (jigsaw puzzles are a favorite in the winter).

I took a six -week class in mindfulness meditation several years ago, and the experience that particularly stayed with me was mindful eating. Focus on the food.  Think about where it cam from, and be grateful for those who made it possible. Look at it, experience it.  Don’t take another bite until you have finished the first.  Mindful eating is not only a good spiritual practice, but also a good way to reduce one’s intake!

  I grew up in an environment where eating was competitive, especially with my older brother, who was a voracious eater. It was fueled by his growth into a 6 foot 5 inch frame, while I topped out at 5’4″. But the habit persisted. When I eat out with a friend, I always finish first. Now I watch the same story play out between my 60 pound dog and my five pound cat.  The tiny 20-year-old cat eats mindfully and returns to nibble throughout the day.  If I do not shelter her food from the dog, my big barking protector will hunt out her food and finish it off, which is not good for either of them.  And trust me, both cat and dog practice mindfulness to the nth degree.  Always focused on what they are doing in the moment.

As I write this, I am resisting the temptation to multitask by turning on NPR for the news of the day.  When I finish this blog, I will turn my attention to the next round of my daily routine, the most challenging in terms of mindfulness.  Five miles, 15 minutes on the exercycle to energize the active part of my day. There my challenge is to silence the monkey mind by concentrating on the body, the exercycle, progress toward my goal.. It helps if, before mounting the exercycle, I make out my to-do list.  Writing things down is off-loading those jumping monkey thoughts to the hard drive, so that I can be patiently in the present, knowing that my list will be waiting for me when I am ready for it.

There is a longer term dimension to patience and impatience as well.  I dashed through life at warp speed.  Married on my 21st birthday, I took three courses in summer school to graduate from college a year early and start graduate school.  At 28 I had a Ph.D., a husband, two children, and an assistant professorship.  I can’t go back and live those years more slowly, but when I retired (early, of course!) I did go back to graduate school to get a master’s degree in theological studies and to savor the experience.  In part to deliberately slow the process and in part because I was commuting a fair distance, I took three years to get a two-year degree. Graduate school in Emory University’s Candler School of Theology was a good place to practice mindfulness.

As I approach my 80th birthday in the summer of 2021, I am very aware that I have  a limited number of years left, especially years of good health, eyesight, and stamina. The past is long and the future is short.  I cannot afford to live the future any longer.  I need to savor the present.  Yes, I need to plan for those final years—that’s prudence, the first virtue on my three virtue list for 2021.  But I also need to live them!  I hereby publicly declare that I am committing to patience and its cousin, mindfulness, in 2021. 

There is an old joke about Unitarians that goes something like this.  Why do Unitarians sing hymns so badly?  Because they are always reading ahead to see if they agree with the theology. Reading ahead does get in the way of experiencing and singing joyfully in the present. I wish you, and me, a mindful, present-focused, patient 2021.