Friday, 30 October 2026
I kept a little book, a page for each virtue, and every evening I marked down each lapse. I never became perfect — but I became a better and happier man than I would otherwise have been.
Autobiography (freely rendered)
Listening mode
I kept a little book, a page for each virtue, and every evening I marked down each lapse. I never became perfect — but I became a better and happier man than I would otherwise have been.
For a week, you note down whenever you were content with something. At first you expect special occasions. Then the entries turn out to be fairly unremarkable things: a stretch of work without interruption, a long walk, a meal with someone you didn't have to be entertaining for.
The list has gaps. On a good evening you may have written nothing at all, on a difficult one you were especially thorough. So it proves little. Still, it can correct a memory that had already filed the whole past month away as a failure.
It would be a pity now to turn the good hours, of all things, into a daily quota. The walk had been lovely partly because you weren't out there so that you could tick a box later.
