Be Less Virtuous

At least in the ways we’ve been taught to be virtuous. 

We’ve made virtue a thing of the saints and it’s not. And we’d really be screwed if it was. If we had to rely on the saints, or the most saintly among us, for something like patience, we would not be enduring this social distancing even as tenuously as we are. It wouldn’t work if we did not already possess the virtue of patience in some measure within us. But we tend to elevate those who demonstrate patience as somehow especially gifted.

If we did not have generosity already within us, where did it come from so quickly as soon as we knew this coronavirus would take hold of our lives? Generosity didn’t show up in everyone, but there was a considerable wave that swept across the planet nevertheless. And in large part, the wave of generosity is one of the things making this quarantine bearable. Without it, we’d be in a very different kind of mess. It can be exasperating that it seems like there’s nothing like a crises to break open the seeds of generosity, but that’s a problem with culture, not humanity.

The impulse to generosity and patience, or any other virtue for that matter doesn’t come from the sky. We don’t have to wish to be generous. Begging for patience is counter-productive. We can pray for these things, but only to remember where to find them within, not to get some kind of fill-up from above. Virtue is not a special allowance afforded to some or just to the “good.” We are coded with generosity and patience and peace and love and other virtuous things already in our spiritual DNA. 

Our society has made virtues like generosity and patience into something so separate and extraordinary, that us ordinary folk believe it takes an act of God to gain real access to them. All of us have equal access to the depth of virtue, but few of us believe or act like it.

Virtue is not achieving heights of moral purity like we’ve been taught. Believing the virtues are connected primarily to the saintly or “morally pure” obscures our access to them. The cultural cliche-ing of virtue raises the social cost of doing good, and confounds our proclivity towards the good. Virtues are not tasks of etiquette or decorum, but rather ways of living that carry the potential for the most human good. And we need more of us to remember we have access to this potential, and gain the courage to risk acting on it.

The truly virtuous among us are not the most separate, spiritually elite, holier-than-thou, or classically heroic. They are the most grounded, the most deeply connected to the people around them - their neighbors - and their plight. And they care about that plight. They know all our plights are interwoven. So they do something about it. Something good.

Virtue is not a gift from heaven, it’s a fruit of the earth. Virtue has for too long been about purity. Virtue is being willing to enter into the mess of this human life and to do the work. And once you’re doing the work, when you’re in the middle of the mess, and the work is relentless, you don’t feel divine, you simply feel human. Perhaps overwhelmingly so.

And that’s all virtue has ever asked of any of us.

We don’t need more saints, just more humans who remember the goodness of their humanity.