Love: We are what we practice

My friend Lara reminds me of Steve McGarrett, the protagonist from the 1960s show “Hawaii 5-0.” Lara says that you have to guard your goodness, and do the right things every day — not just on the days when it’s easy to be a good person or when it’s easy to do the right things.

She’s right, and I well recall the episode when McGarrett made this same point. In that show, a young man had great potential but made all the wrong choices. Finally, the character’s potentials were destroyed by his mistakes; his bad choices outweighed the good ones. McGarrett poetically summarized that tragedy: “We never had the chance to see what he could have been; we only had the chance to see what he was.”

I often reflect on how the small things become the big things, how the everyday choices weave the fabric of a soul. Long before Lara or McGarrett helped crystalize this idea for me — about the connections between actions and identity — Aristotle wrote: “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

This concept is both practical and profound. I remember French class: I was distracted and multi-tasking, attending to unimportant things. I would complete my assignments and then realize I had no idea what I had just studied. Through those distracted study sessions, I was, essentially, training myself to be a poor student, learning the wrong lessons. Fortunately, I had time to reverse those habits and learn new patterns. Many of us still have time to change poor training and bad habits, too; time to become a better student, parent or professional.

Training for excellence is likely even more important at the level of character and soul. As an example, if I am honest with family, friends and associates, I am practicing honesty and learning the habit of being an honest person. In contrast, if I practice behaviors that are dishonest, I become what I train to become: dishonest. If we practice the wrong habits, we learn the wrong lessons.

This situation reminds me of a friend who had all the advantages in life, and great potential, but when challenged emerged, it became clear that he had practiced the wrong habits and mastered the wrong lessons. We have all witnessed in fear and trembling as a life destined for greatness is eclipsed by mistakes.

The patterns that derail us from excellence start small, but as with any habit that is practiced repeatedly, the small things become the big things. I have heard it said that the first lie is the hardest to tell, but once the line is crossed, it becomes easier to cross every time. We are becoming that which we repeatedly do, what we practice, and now the “wrong things” feel “normal.” We have mastered the wrong lessons, and those habits show our true identity.

Training for excellence of character is a profound undertaking that requires daily practice, and it is always harder to practice those habits, to protect one’s goodness and to strive for excellence during the desert seasons. But those are the training grounds for soul, the times that you glimpse not only who you are but who you could become.

This story was originally published March 30, 2015 at 1:00 AM with the headline "Love: We are what we practice."