My Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life

Want to get the "Moment of Happiness"? A daily happiness quotation in your inbox.   Sign up here close daily quote

May 12, 2012
12 Comment

Trying To Be More Virtuous Can Undermine Your Sense of Virtue.

Further Secrets of Adulthood:

Also ...

  • A visit to my friend Maggie Mason's blog Mighty Girl always gets me laughing out loud. That kind of free-wheeling style looks so effortless--until you try to write that way yourself.

  • Join the happiness conversation on Facebook and Twitter (@gretchenrubin).

Tags:

Other posts you might be interested in...

  1. Do You Buy Green? Refrain from Nagging? Embody Virtue? Better Watch Yourself!
  2. “Take Yourself Less Seriously—and Take Yourself More Seriously.”
  3. Secret of Adulthood: Succeed By Failing.
  4. “I’m Not Saying This To Appear Virtuous. I Have Plenty of Unhealthy Habits Most Other People Have Outgrown. But My Day Is Better If I Exercise.”
  5. This Wednesday: Tips for living a virtuous life–from Ben Franklin in 1793.
  • Rose

    Can you explain what this means? Maybe I’m the only one, but I rarely understand the meaning behind your secrets of adulthood until you explain them. Would you consider adding in an example to go with these posts? Usually I have to wait until someone else asks for clarification in the comments.

    • gretchenrubin

      Part of the fun is meant to be figuring out what YOU think it means.

      To give an idea of what I meant – a quotation from C. S. Lewis: “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good….Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.”

  • SusanB

    I take this to mean being good, so good that you become critical and judgmental of others.  Being critical and judgmental is not virtuous it’s ugly and unbecoming.  Also, this behavior causes a person to hide and not deal with their own life issues causing shame and great dysfunction.  The perfect religious type of person comes to mind….

    • Stretching my Imagination

      Yes, this was my interpretation as well.  In some cases, it is possible for a person to become so focused on the standards and behaviors that a person thinks is required or necessary to be a ‘good’ person that he/she all who don’t act in that way are somehow beneath them as a person with less intrinsic worth.  Or maybe someone who (ironically) doesn’t “try” hard enough to live up to potential and is therefore consciously a slug.  Not true, of course, but trying to be too virtuous can lead down this path I think.  Closed-mindedness seems another risk, judging the world by one’s own standards not knowing the context of the other party’s beliefs, context, situation, etc.

      Also, being too virtuous risks putting the focus on other people – in the bad sense.  Looking out for other people’s faults, measuring them against one’s own (or lack thereof)… in addition to the harm done to the other person and the ugliness it reflects on the primary actor, it can also go the other way and make the actor feel worse about him/herself.

  • Senezj

    I agree with Rose. I enjoy these but sometimes don’t understand them until you explain in the comments. Would love a little explanation of your meaning in each post to go along with each item.

  • Ebrandin

    Can you clarify what the above means?  How does trying to be more virtuous undermine
    one’s sense of virtue?  I am baffled!

  • Shirley Creed

    I’ll be interested to see Gretchen’s interpretation of this and I think it would make a great subject for an essay. I see it as a human truth. When one TRIES to be selfless and “good” and endlessly compassionate you get frustrated because it’s so impossible.  You become self conscious about your virtue and either smug or resentful. You give away so much of yourself that you have nothing left to nurture yourself with. You get compassion fatigue. Real saints like Jesus and MotherTteresa didn’t TRY to be virtuous. They were so full of love it overflowed to those around them.

    • Ariel

       When you read Mother Theresa’s memoir you she had her own challenges and demons. She had a crisis of faith for a prolonged period (years) that left her questioning her faith and leaving her feeling like a failure…alas it is all relative and I guess we all have our  mountains to climb. 

  • Peninith1

    I think it’s pretty obvious: if we just wander through our lives with no attention focused on whether what we do adds or doesn’t add to the sum of goodness in the world, we’re oblivious and not ever worried about whether we are being ‘virtuous’ or not. We’re not evaluating our actions or inactions by any standard of virtue. But if we become conscious and make an effort to observe our choices, trying always to choose the better part, we will soon become conscious of lapses in consideration for others or selfishness or opportunities to do a good thing or give of self or substance that we pass up. We may even become puzzled between one good action and another and fret over which is better (this is the trap of over-scrupulous thinking). What we come to recognize quickly when we aim to practice virtue is that the opportunities to do more, do better, go deeper into service and kindness and sacrifice are virtually bottomless and endless. We’re almost bound to feel inadequate if we don’t focus our efforts of choose limits. Otherwise we might soon find ourselves ‘spending out’ with our very lives, as the saints so strongly demonstrate. It’s not wrong to do that, but it’s best to have a focus other than accumulating a personal stash of gold stars. Then the resentment and smugness creep in. It’s important not to calculate or keep score, to be humble (i.e. ACCURATE) in our self assessment, and to spend less time on self assessment than on doing right.

  • Ariel

    I can only interpret this from my own experience. It seems that when I attempt to correct one fault I realize how many their are standing in line to be corrected! Ah well I just keep trying.

  • Amanda

    My interpretation of it is…believe it or not, the example that comes to mind is from the soap ‘The Bold and The Beautiful’. Hope is in love with Liam, but is saving herself for marriage. She ties her virginity in with the promotion of her fashion line, which becomes larger than life. It becomes so huge it takes on a life of its own and she is unable to make decisions that dont tie-in with the fashion line. In trying to be more virtuous (trying to help young adults abandon meaningless sex), she has lost her sense of virtue (saving herself for the man she loves).

  • Amanda

    Sometimes being virtuous in your own life (not trying to change the whole world), is enough.

« Previous Next »