March 8
We become just by doing what is just, temperate by temperate action, brave by brave.
Nicomachean Ethics (freely rendered)
Listening mode
We become just by doing what is just, temperate by temperate action, brave by brave.
Sometimes you act better than you feel. You say something that is hard for you to say, or give back something you could easily have kept. Afterwards it seems as if you had borrowed a role for the occasion. Before you spoke, the courage wasn't there. It came only with the words, and even then only halfway.
It's tempting to suspect you were merely pretending. But where else would a disposition come from, if not from attempts like these? Hardly anyone is generous first and then gives. Mostly it's the other way round, and for a while deed and feeling don't match. The deed is ahead of you.
Less comfortable is the fact that this road runs both ways. The small excuse also practises something, as does looking away just in time, and keeping quiet because it's easier. Only nothing about these feels borrowed. These actions fit you from the start, as if they had always belonged.
With them, the suspicion that you might be pretending never even arises.
