I am still processing, but one obvious, large thing popped up this morning: when we violate our own principles, it is like doing something wrong in front of a child. There is a childish part of ALL of us which notes our behavior and withdraws or expands in response.
Can you remember being a child? Where there not times when you shrunk and felt less when perhaps your parents fought loudly? Or when your father cheated on something? Or your mother went into a hysterical rage? There are countless possibilities.
Most of us are raised with at least nominal nods to traditional moral virtues, but at some point we start to realize that adults violate them, and some violate them constantly. Our world is, if not filled, at least burdened more than it could be, with the results of human evil.
When you are confronted with this fact, you more or less have two choices: you can accept as actually right the violations of principle, or you can react against them. When you are a child, though, you really DON”T have much of a choice, if the offenders are your parents (and to some extent, being imperfect, they always are) or people close to you. No 8 year old is going to take a principled stand in defense of honesty on a sustained basis. They may cry out, in their childish way, but they will be told to shut up by most people capable of dishonesty in the first place, and soon enough the cognitive tension will push their outrage deeper in them, even if they don’t forget it.
Here is the thing: I woke up this morning and realized that when I break MY rules, it is like punishing that child. Most of the happy, creative, joyful, connected, playful, HONEST places in us still exist emotionally as children no older than perhaps 12; and we lose connection with those inner children when we knowingly violate OUR OWN rules–and we all have them.
I realized this week that I have the soul of a soldier. What the soul of a soldier cries out for is a mission, a cause larger than itself which is intrinsically beneficial to others, and which requires hard, sustained effort to accomplish. This is my personal soul’s deepest hunger. It is the key to my happiness.
And I think most ACTUAL soldiers are like this too. If you peel back all the cynicism and anger and defensiveness and general irritability, most soldiers have very childlike attachments to their units and cause. There is a deep love and connection, EVEN IF they outwardly don’t show it. I see it. Evidence for it is everywhere.
And beyond this inner child, which is more or less a highly sophisticated sensor for contradictions and hypocrisies, there is a spiritual self, which I really feel I made some contact with this week. It is calm, deeply joyous, inherently brave, determined, and bright. You cannot get in contact with it, and certainly cannot maintain contact with it, if your inner child’s bullshit detector gets or remains triggered.
What is called virtue is simply enlightened self interest. This is the core of what I have to say. It is not unique, but most important truths are and always have been voiced in many different ways, constantly, throughout history.