Right Thing, Right Now: Good Values. Good Character. Good Deeds. (The Stoic Virtues Series)

“Virtue” can seem old-fashioned. In fact, virtue—arete—translates to something very simple and very timeless: Excellence. Moral. Physical. Mental. In the ancient world, virtue was comprised of four key components. Courage. Temperance. Justice. Wisdom.

They’re called “cardinal,” C. S. Lewis pointed out, not because they come down from church authorities, but because they originate from the Latin cardo, or hinge. It’s pivotal stuff. It’s the stuff that the door to the good life hangs on.

Courage, bravery, endurance, fortitude, honor, sacrifice…

Temperance, self-control, moderation, composure, balance… Justice, fairness, service, fellowship, goodness, kindness… Wisdom, knowledge, education, truth, self-reflection, peace…

“Justice means much more than the sort of thing that goes on in law courts,” C. S. Lewis would remind listeners in a famous lecture series. “It is the old name for everything we should now call ‘fairness’; it includes honesty, give and take, truthfulness, keeping promises, and all that side of life.”

Until we stop debating, we can’t start doing. We keep debating so we don’t have to start doing.

“Love thy neighbor as thyself,” Hillel told the man. “All the rest is commentary.” Care about others. Treat them as you would wish to be treated. Not just when it’s convenient or recognized, but especially when it isn’t. Even when it’s not returned. Even when it costs you.

“Life is not meaningless for the man who considers certain actions wrong simply because they are wrong, whether or not they violate the law,” he once explained. “This kind of moral code gives a person a focus, a basis on which to conduct himself.”

following in the tradition of the ancients who saw justice as a habit or a craft, a way of living. Because that’s what justice should be—not a noun but a verb. Something we do, not something we get. A form of human excellence. A statement of purpose. A series of actions.

The virtue of a person is measured not by his outstanding efforts but by his everyday behavior.

It begins with the decision about who you are going to be. The old-fashioned values of personal integrity, of honesty, of dignity and honor. The basic behaviors in which these ideals manifest themselves: Doing what you say. Doing business the right way. Treating people well. The Stoics said that the chief task in life is to focus on what you control.

Justice can be… …the standards we hold ourselves to …the way we treat people …the promises we keep …the integrity we bring to our words …the loyalty and generosity we give to our friends …the opportunities we accept (and turn down) …the things we care about …the difference we make for people.

We keep our word to ourselves—that’s discipline. We keep our word to others because it’s justice.

Joan Didion famously said, with the decision to take responsibility for our own. It is from here, she said, that character and self-respect stems.

deciding what kind of person we’re going to be—are

Virtue has to be our compass, goodness has to be our goal.

“There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a vice,” Joseph Pulitzer famously said, “which does not live by secrecy.” Or as the Bible put it, evil hates the light.

What he’s talking about is duty. Not what’s convenient. Not what’s easy. Not what everyone else is doing but what we are obligated to do as a result of our potential and talents, as well as the profession or roles we have selected for ourselves in the world.

Integrity is living by what you think is right. Not what you can get away with, not what everyone else is doing.

Each of us has competing obligations, views, incentives in life. We will be presented with dilemmas. We will find ourselves in vexing moral quandaries, presented with temptations, the logic of a given situation.

When we don’t do our best, when we hold something back, we are cheating ourselves. We are cheating our gifts. We are cheating the potential beneficiaries of us reaching our full potential. To whom much is given, the lesson from the parable goes, much is expected.

Loyalty is expensive. It’s inconvenient. It gets in the way. It’s messy, it’s complicated, it’s hard to explain.

Truman told him the story of attending Tom Pendergast’s funeral and explained that what mattered, what people would remember, is that somebody stuck by their friends. Then Truman looked Acheson in the eye and said, “Dean, always be shot in front, never behind,”

don’t have to condone what they did. Loyalty does not mean protecting people from the consequences of their actions.

Loyalty is something we give. It’s not something we expect. Nor is it something we ought to expect to always be understood.

Such is the power of a north star. Such is the power of values. They are, like discipline, a kind of destiny. Or a curse.

Discipline can feel constraining, like it’s telling you what you can’t do. Justice is something different. It is an ideal to aspire to, something higher to aim at. That’s what a north star is. Something to reach toward. Something beyond the horizon, lifting our gaze up instead of down.

There can be only one way to fight the general evil of life: It is in the moral, religious and spiritual perfection of your own life. —LEO Tolstoy

We often know what the right thing to do is. The problem is timing. Is this the right opportunity? The right moment?

“It’s impossible for me to delay something that I see needs to be done,” Carter later explained.

Discipline is so often a battle against procrastination. But justice can be too. We don’t want to do it because we know it will be hard. Because we know there will be costs.

But this violates Aristotle’s view of virtue. It wasn’t a thing you arrived at, he said, it was a daily practice—it was a habit. And in this daily practice, we become who we are.

We’ll have to pay the price at some point. So let’s start making the payments. Not later. But right now.

Justice is the virtue that makes us useful to ourselves as well as to others. —Socrates

We have the power… …to care …to help others …to learn how to create change …to be generous …to build bonds …to stand up for the little guy. But it’s not a question of power, it’s a question of will. Will you?

Beatrice first coined the concept of “collective bargaining,” founded the London School of Economics, relaunched the Labour Party, and helped form the Fabian Society, which today we would call a progressive think tank. She fought for a social safety net in Britain, fought against poverty and exploitation wherever she found it.

Most social change is a result of a similar kind of rude awakening. Someone sees something and decides to do something.

“God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” Remember that you can commit injustice by doing nothing also, Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself in Meditations.

Even when the status quo is unjust—in fact, often precisely when the status quo is unjust, there are people who are benefiting from it. Naturally, they’re going to resist change.

They must know how to effectively gain and use power as well as how to defend against it. How to acquire allies, how to use them, how to get things done over objections and entrenched interests. In fact, the more averse to power one is, the more likely one needs to get up close and personal about it—before their naivete or idealism brings them or their cause harm.

Pragmatism without virtue is dangerous and hollow. Virtue without pragmatism is ineffectual and impotent.

Non angeli sed angli. Stop looking for angels. Start looking for angles.

there’s only one way to get there, to do that. And it’s the same way one gets better at writing or any other craft: by doing it.

If you’ve been blessed, be a blessing.

The more successful you are, the more self-reliant you are, the more left over you have to help others become the same. To whom much is given, much is expected.

In this life, of course, we are measured by our accomplishments as individuals. We strive to realize our potential and do our best. But after a certain point, this only means so much. What matters more, what matters over a longer horizon, is who we have helped succeed along the way.

Generosity is the seed of a great coaching tree.

sic semper tyrannis (thus always to tyrants)

Most change, most justice is inherently disruptive. It means challenging how things are. It means upsetting people. It means taking risks. It means saying things that are impolite, unpleasant, and even offensive.

“No woman has ever so comforted the distressed,” Clare Boothe Luce said of Eleanor Roosevelt, “or distressed the comfortable.”

Did they hate injustice more than they loved decorum?

Good trouble does good work for good causes.

The Stoics say we build a life, create change, action by action, step by step. “No one can stop you from that,” Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations.

We are born perfectly selfish—caring only about our own needs, our own basic survival. Yet we are given at birth the model of perfect selflessness: the unconditional love of a parent. All of us, it has been said, are here because someone took care of us when we were small and defenseless. The work of our lives is to go from this dependence to dependability, from being taken care of to being a caretaker—but not just for our own children if we choose to have them, but for others, for ideas, for causes, for justice itself.

In October 1947, as he said goodbye to his grandson, he handed him a small slip of paper that listed the seven blunders of humanity. Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Religion without sacrifice. Politics without principle.

nothing good results from trying to chase down gratitude or recognition for what you’ve done. “When you’ve done well and another has benefited by it, why like a fool do you look for a third thing on top—credit for the good deed or a favor in return?” Marcus Aurelius would ask himself.

Despair is a choice. Cynicism is an excuse. Neither create a better world.

There is no justice without the ability to acknowledge mistakes and take responsibility for your actions.

Our potential is not reached by running from things, it’s by grappling with them—especially the difficult ones.

People are worse than we’d like. They are also better than we can possibly comprehend. That’s the power of grace.

In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius would write that “what doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.”