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It's not as hard as you think.

What does it mean to be virtuous?

People often think that a virtuous action is hard or requires a significant mental effort or act of the will to achieve.

You can probably think of yourself as "forcing" yourself to do something when you don't particularly want to do it. You know, though, that it'll be good for you and later you will thank current you. For example, doing your housework, cooking a healthy meal, going for a run when it's wet (and you're unfit),

This is conception of virtue is not correct. At all, in fact.

What is a virtue, then?

Generally - a virtue is a perfection of a power of the soul. For Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas, the soul, anima, is the form of the person (where their body is the matter). More on that another time.

More precisely, a virtue is a good operative habit that perfects the power of the soul for good action. It disposes us to do the good act with ease, promptness and joy. It makes the agent good and his action good.

With a virtue fully developed, this way of acting is now so second nature that it requires no inner conflict, no sense of the will battling the emotions or passions to get its way. Of course, the action itself may be difficult and painful, but the person who did the difficult, painful thing would say "could I have done anything else"?

Think of your physical capabilities. When you start to train, you certainly can't run 100m in 12 seconds or jump 4m in the long jump, or lift 80kg on the bench press. With training and time, your muscles, heart, lungs, and neural pathways allow you to do what you previously could not.

With training, so too with virtue. Once you've acquired the virtue, it's not as hard as you thought - it's easy.

Ed

P.S. This and future blogs will slowly cover more around the topic of virtue and practical tips to practice, drawn from things I have read and tried.

P.S. Here's "promptness, ease and joy" as a gif.