Habits have a bad press. Not completely, of course. We talk about bad habits and good habits. Yet, if something becomes merely a habit, it seems somehow less genuine, less heartfelt. Take love, for example. The first flush of romantic love is anything but habitual. It is new, exciting, pulse-quickening, thought-captivating, life-absorbing. When the "madly in love" phase is over and all calms down a little, all is a little bland. Being with the one you love is habituated. Much more affection and much less eros is the order of the day. When love becomes like a favorite pair of old slippers we tend not to value it as much as when love is new and effervescent.
I have become a fan of habits. Habits and love go together.
But how do you do it? Here we can learn a little from the Aristotle. (So important was Aristotle to St. Thomas Aquinas that he called him "the Philosopher.") To become a certain kind of person requires that you internalize certain values that become associated virtues (or character traits). When you have developed the virtues associated with that kind of person, you achieve in life what that kind of person aims to achieve. To develop the virtue you need to habituate virtuous actions.
If we apply this to love it goes something like this:
If I aim to become a loving person, then I need to value what a loving person would value. I need to internalize those values so that they become part of my character. I develop those character traits by habituating loving actions.
I have become a fan of habits. Habits and love go together.
In a conversation with a legal expert, Jesus said, "The most important commandment is 'Israel Listen! Our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You will love your neighbor as yourself.'"Love is that important. A good aim in life is to become a better lover.
But how do you do it? Here we can learn a little from the Aristotle. (So important was Aristotle to St. Thomas Aquinas that he called him "the Philosopher.") To become a certain kind of person requires that you internalize certain values that become associated virtues (or character traits). When you have developed the virtues associated with that kind of person, you achieve in life what that kind of person aims to achieve. To develop the virtue you need to habituate virtuous actions.
If we apply this to love it goes something like this:
If I aim to become a loving person, then I need to value what a loving person would value. I need to internalize those values so that they become part of my character. I develop those character traits by habituating loving actions.
In my Love as a Guide to Morals I speak of twelve virtues of love. I'm sure there are more, but twelve seems a useful number. I suggest: goodness, no-harm, courage, fairness, kindness
with gentleness, care, faithfulness, reparation with forgiveness, respect with
attentiveness, non-possessiveness, moderation, thankfulness.
To be a better lover would be to become the kind of person who has developed a character that is shaped by something like these twelve virtues. How to develop the virtue? By making each virtue a little daily habit. Live intentionally: do a little good or kind act here and there, refuse to harm, little actions (inner and outer) that respect the Other. In time, all these little actions become habits and these habits become character traits (you have internalized them and they become "second nature"). This makes for a loving person.
+Ab. Andy