How To Cultivate Temperance
Finding balance
Temperance is a protective virtue. It includes the strengths of prudence, which protects your future from overindulgence; forgiveness, which protects against wrath and hatred; and humility, which protects against ignorance-inducing hubris.
These protections can be thought of as restraints, the most important restraint being that which restricts our tendency to think too highly of ourselves. The more full of ourselves we are, the less room we leave for others. Those others—our future self, loved ones, fellow beings, and future generations—are worth making room for.
So, harness the strength of temperance and cultivate an ability to resist. Justifying imprudent, resentful, and proud behavior with “that’s just how I am” is cowardly, pathetic, and selfish. Prove yourself wrong. Live for something greater than yourself, and become greater to support it.
Prudence
Indulgence burdens your future.
There’s nothing wrong with indulgence; after all, temperance is about moderation, not removal. But, the problem with indulgence is that we forget about the burden part when we’re flooded with the good feelings that indulgence provides. When we’re imprudent and the floods of pleasure pass, we’re rudely reminded of the bleak future that we’ve made for ourselves.
Imprudence indicates a lack of courage, love, and wisdom. You need courage to resist your near-sighted, selfish desires; the light of love to give you a vision of what’s worth fighting for; and wisdom to organize your life in a way that efficiently channels your courage towards what you love.
Take stock of your habits. Do you know where they’re taking you? Are they taking you where you’d truly like to go? If not, are you willing to fight to get there?
Give your future a voice.
Prompts
How often do I sacrifice short term pleasure for long term wellbeing?
How often am I impulsive (e.g., fast food, fast fashion, social media, etc.)?
How often am I compulsive (e.g., perfectionist, germophobic, miserly, etc.)?
Where will my current habits take me and those I care for? Is that where I'd like us to go?
Am I borrowing happiness from my future?
Practices
Ask yourself what you want. Then, ask yourself what you long for. Build intimacy with, and orient yourself towards, meaningful longings; work on shedding meaningless wants.
Organize your environment in a way that channels you towards the person you want to become.
Give your future a voice.
Forgiveness
Buddha said anger is like a honey-tipped arrow with a poisoned root. It feels good to get angry; we indulge in it. But anger has a bitter aftertaste; it eats away at us, leaving us sour and alone.
The arrow of anger always misses the mark, flying towards an over-simplistic story that enables us to revel in our wrath. We tend not to second guess anger and hatred because it comes so naturally, it feels true. The truth is, however, that a multitude of causes and conditions give rise to whatever we’re upset with, and because our anger and hatred have nowhere to land in that messy multitude, we neglect most of it so that we can settle on an unfortunate target.
Dostoevsky said stupidity is brief and guileless, while reason hedges and hides. The reasonable response to a frustrating event is to acknowledge the innumerable hedging and hiding events that had to occur to give rise to that event. When we do this, blame gets shifted from the transgressor to the multitude of circumstances that gave rise to the transgressor, which diffuses the blame and transforms our hatred into pity. And once we’re able to pity others, we’re able to forgive.
Prompts
Do I hold resentment towards any person (myself included) or group?
Do I hate anyone or any group?
Do I blame others to justify my anger?
Practices
Work on transforming hatred into pity. Blame not transgressors, but the circumstances that gave rise to their harmful behavior. Forgiveness will follow.
Humility
If I were to rank the most important character strengths, I think humility would sit near the top.
To have courage, we must swallow our pride and admit to ourselves that we can be better. To love and be just, we must relax our pride so that our love can extend beyond ourselves. To be temperate, we must dial down our pride to give our future or those who make mistakes a voice. To gain knowledge, we must let our pride take a hit by admitting that we are ignorant fools and that right education may make us less so. To transcend, we must leave behind our pride to step outside of ourselves.
Cultivating character depends on humility.
If you take anything away from this series, please let it be the importance of humility. Pride isn’t a bad thing; remember, temperance is all about moderation, not elimination. But pride gone unchecked will carry you away and leave a world of ignorance and suffering in your wake.
Save yourself, and others, the pain.
Prompts
Do I assume me or my groups are more important than others? Is this assumption true?
Am I the only cause of all my successes and failures? What else contributes?
What do I feel I deserve? Do I actually deserve it?
What am I proud of? Would gratitude be more appropriate?
Practices
Use feelings of praise or blame as a cue to investigate whether what is praised or blamed is truly worthy of those feelings.
Worship something greater than yourself.
If you have questions you ask yourself or practices you engage with that you find work well, I’d love to hear about them. Feel free to let me know in the comments.