A few weeks ago I read that when Benjamin Franklin was twenty, he created a list of thirteen virtues. From the age of 20, well into his seventies, he kept a chart to keep track of the virtues and his adherence to them. He made a table with seven columns (one for each day of the week) and thirteen rows (one for each virtue), and would place a black dot in the corresponding square whenever a day went by in which he didn’t live up to the virtue of the current week. Every thirteen weeks he would start a new table.
For the past three weeks I’ve been puzzling out what I consider to be a “virtue”. It’s a far more difficult question than I would have expected—and I’m still not sure about what is “virtuous” or what makes it so.
As of writing this, I have a pretty solid (or so I think) list of six virtues. However, describing how I came up with the list is challenging. It was a mixture of intuition, my reading of different religions and philosophies, and looking at why I admire certain people.
I’m going to keep track of the virtues similar to the way Franklin did, but instead of marking the days that I don’t live up to the virtue, I will mark the days in which I feel I have.
“Virtue alone is sufficient to make a man great, glorious, and happy” -Benjamin Franklin
Here’s my list.
Courage
“Only boldness can deliver from fear. And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is somehow violated, and the whole future is condemned to hopeless staleness.” -Carl Jung
-Speaking the truth regardless of the consequences
-Moving forward despite fear and anxiety
-Doing things you fear for the sole purpose of desensitizing you to fear and practicing courage
Creation
“It’s easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It’s a lot more difficult to perform one.” -Chuck Palahniuk
-Creating art, literature, music, and ideas
-Building something beautiful
-Bringing ideas and dreams into existence
Endurance
“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
-Suffering voluntarilty
-Bearing suffering without complaint
-Living through Hell
Temperance
“It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.” -Diogenes the Dog
-Have only what is essential
-Avoiding any sort of addiction
-Avoiding excess comfort
Tranquility
“It is in your power to withdraw yourself whenever you desire. Perfect tranquility within consists in the good ordering of the mind, the realm of your own.” -Marcus Aurelius
-Calmness
-Control of emotions
-Silence
Transcendence
“Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.” -Viktor Frankl
-Appreciation of beauty and nature
-Gratitude and love
-Connection to something deeper/greater than self
I started my virtue chart last week on Wednesday (today is Sunday, therefore I have completed ‘Courage’ and today is the first day of ‘Creation’). After the six weeks are over I will write about how they went and whether or not I decide to continue the experiment indefinitely. Here is the first act of creation for the week.
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