The Potential To Become Great - Part 6
The Cardinal Virtues - justice, courage, self-control, and wisdom – work together as a whole. Justice – the effort to be right toward yourself, others, and responsibilities - requires courage, and courage describes the attitude and will power to choose what is right even when the choice runs contrary to popular opinion. As I wrote last month, recognizing the need for courage, reminds us of the “good” that lives in our hearts and our aspiration to “do the good.”
Courage is coupled with self-control. It is one thing for a young person to aspire toward the good. It is another thing to have the mental and psychological wherewithal to answer the call to courage. Without self-control - the combined effort of mind, will, and emotion – it will be difficult to carry out one’s aspirations. Self-control is the aggregate of reasoning, passion, and volition. The young person who learns self-control not only knows the good and loves the good, but is able to do the good.
At a practical level, self-control describes one’s ability to manage an internal conversation. This conversation is a discussion in our minds between contending ideas - what we should or should not do. Sometimes it is a conversation about good or bad. Other times it is about what is good, better, or best. When teaching middle school students, I often describe the conversation in simplistic, yet very experiential, language. On the chalkboard I draw a large circle that represents a young person. I draw a diameter dividing the person in half. On one side of the circle I sketch a cartoon character with horns and a pitchfork. On the other half, I scribble a crude stick figure with a halo over its head. A childish illustration to be sure, but the young adolescents understand immediately what I mean because this picture illustrates their experience. They have experienced the arguments between these two caricatures.
I explain to my students that at each juncture of decision-making, whether it is something simple like doing or not doing homework, or something more serious that challenges the morality and ethics of family and culture, each of us faces contending, internal “voices.” Self-control is learning how to manage these conversations. Successful management, that is, the ability to regulate the conversation so the youngster does what is good, requires three components.
First, students should realize that their internal debate is normal; it is human. Like every human being, young adults are capable of very good thoughts and very bad thoughts. There does not exist on the face of the earth a category of people who are good and hence have only good thoughts. Nor are there a group of people who are bad and have only bad thoughts. It is rather that both voices do battle within our mind and hearts. How a person finally determines to live his or her life is not the result of being inherently bad or good, but how he or she manages the internal argument between good and bad. It is within the power of each youngster to become a good and noble young adult.
Second, students need an arsenal of moral and ethical arguments for all the challenges they face. Without weapons of good reasoning - lessons from parents, lessons from church-temple-synagogue-mosque, examples from role models, reinforcement from school and society - young people are helpless puppets easily manipulated by the ideas, trends, and justifications for thought and action that can misdirect and then spoil their aspirations.
Finally, students need mentors - parents are the best - with whom they can rehearse and practice managing their internal conversations. This is particularly important in the early teen years when young people are flooded with ideas and concepts that may challenge their moral upbringing. During times of challenge, young people need mature adults with whom they can discuss their internal conversations and learn how to develop healthy reasoning that will lead to self-control and the attainment of their aspirations. When functioning as a mentor, adults must be careful not to judge a young person’s thoughts too quickly. If parents are judgmental, they risk driving the youngster into silence and rebellion. If parents are too flippant, i.e. “he’s free to make his own choices”, they are relinquishing a powerful role that could help their child reach his or her highest potential.
Self-control is a learned habit, cultivated through guidance.
By Charles Debelak
