Grit & Glory. Kaiser Johnson

       Chapter Three

      Virtue and the Power of Habit

       “He who combines the practice of the virtues with spiritual knowledge is a man of power. For with the first he withers his desire and tames his incensiveness [his tendency to excite or provoke], and with the second he gives wings to his intellect and goes out of himself to God.”

      — Saint Maximus the Confessor

      There’s a truism that people only change out of “inspiration or desperation,” and I remember a therapist I know once saying: “For someone to change for the better, they don’t have to love the good. They don’t even have to want to love the good. All they have to do is want to want to love the good. God can work with that.” As he pointed out, the bar to start positive change is actually very low. So, if you find yourself in a place of mind, body, heart, or soul that you’re unhappy about… good. Otherwise you have no inspiration (or point of desperation) from which to effect change. G. K. Chesterton puts the question this way: “Can [you] hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?”

      In the fall of Adam and Eve, our nature was corrupted. As a result, all of humanity experiences a weakened will, so that we all totally relate when Saint Paul says: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rom 7:15). We struggle to figure out our lives, and even after we do we struggle to live them. The good news is that in Jesus Christ we receive the grace to reorient our actions and our desires toward the right things, toward things that are truly good — and don’t just look good. It’s a fascinating little principle of life that, very frequently, we first have to consistently orient our actions to the good before our desires are oriented toward the good.

      So, what does all this have to do with virtue? Well, virtues are the qualities of spirit that enable us to choose the good. More specifically, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “A virtue is an habitual and firm disposition to do the good. It allows the person not only to perform good acts, but to give the best of himself … he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions” (1803).

      Virtues, both natural and supernatural, come to us most readily as the product of habit. Remember the anecdote of a woman praying to be more patient and loving? Rather than knocking her free will out of the way and transforming her into a caricature of kindness, God provided her plentiful opportunities to practice patience and kindness. Far more challenging (but also better). Practicing virtue (natural and supernatural), and consistently practicing it, and habitually choosing the good, are the only sure ways to stop neglecting what is truly good for our souls and/or our bodies.

      What does that look like? Well, to my mind, that means a daily practice of exercising your heart and soul, body and mind, coupled with a daily practice of feeding your heart and soul, body and mind. A daily practice of giving your heart and soul, body and mind the rest they need. In the workout guides at the end of this book, I’ve provided what you’ll need to create a daily practice, one that stays dynamic from one day to the next, and uses each day as preparation for the next. But as I mentioned earlier, the only way even a plan for single day works is if you do it. Then do it again the second day. Then do it again the third day. Take it one day at a time, but let that day always be from today until tomorrow.

      Your daily practice stretches from this very minute for the next twenty-four hours, not the past twenty-four. What are you doing right now and in the next twenty-four hours to live in accord with the truth, with your goals, with your greatest good? What action will you take in this moment to do the difficult but necessary thing? That’s the question always before us: Will I choose the slide of easy counterfeits, or the harder climb of authentic virtue? There are a million temptations, excuses, and unhealthy desires that can derail us. The key is to exercise both your mind and your free will to say, “I see that for what it is, and I choose the good instead.”

      When I’m busy or sick, or have sinned, I know I’m tempted to say, “If I don’t really pray today, that’s fine, I prayed yesterday,” or “I’ll pray tomorrow, that’s good enough.” The truth is God doesn’t need my prayers, I do. When I’m busy or sick or frustrated, I know I’m tempted to say: “This sin will make me feel better… and it’s so little. It doesn’t really matter. I’m good enough.” The truth is God doesn’t need me to be good, I do. When I’m busy or sick or tired, I know I’m tempted to say: “I can skip my workout. I’m too tired to do it well anyway. It doesn’t matter this one time,” or “I know it’s not good for me to eat another half loaf of bread in fondue, but it’s not a big deal. It’s fine.” The truth is God doesn’t need me to treat the temple of my body with respect… I do.

      What we do today with our bodies and our souls is what we do tomorrow with our bodies and souls, unless we make a change and keep reorienting ourselves toward that change. I have a good friend who was in really peak physical condition. He ate right, exercised regularly and well, and made sure to get enough sleep. Then a particularly frustrating and stressful holiday season arrived. First his eating well fell by the wayside. It’s an easy temptation between Thanksgiving and Christmas. He continued to struggle all the way until Easter. By Pentecost, fifty days later, he’d created a six-month habit of poor eating. All the while, there was so much to do, so much traveling, so much work to fit in, and then the time he had set aside for workouts and for proper sleep started to vanish. Now, it’s been three years, and I’ll still hear him say: “I’m going to get back to eating right and working out. Let’s start Monday!” Then, if you haven’t guessed, Monday comes, but Sunday was a late night, and the gym is deprived of his presence again. Remember, this was one of my most in-shape, peak-physical-condition friends!

      The fact is, we can’t practice virtue of any kind “on Monday.” There is no Monday, there is no “next week,” there is no “my New Year’s resolution will be …” when it comes to virtue. We only have one actual moment in which to choose the good, and that is right now. If we choose poorly now, it becomes easier to choose poorly again. But if we choose well right now, it becomes easier to choose well in the next moment, and the next moment after that, and the next moment after that. To paraphrase the Catechism, we build habit and firm disposition to do what’s good. This habitual doing good allows us not only to perform good acts, but to give the best of ourselves. Eventually, we pursue the good because we begin to love it and more easily choose it in concrete actions. That’s virtue, lived out in our souls and through our bodies. So… do it!