I have chosen to undertake the goal of bettering myself on a virtuous level to help myself become a better person overall. This goal will help me with every aspect of my life when it comes to personal relationships as well as overall happiness and well being. If I am able to improve myself virtuously, I will be happier with myself and the people around me will be happier to be in my presence. I do not undertake this goal as some original idea, but am doing this in large part because of inspiration gained from Benjamin Franklinās own strive for moral perfection. Although I acknowledge the difficulty in trying to achieve perfection, I do know that it is an admirable task that Ben Franklin himself found important enough to continue throughout his entire life. The knowledge gained from Franklinās own experiences will certainly prove to be beneficial in helping me achieve my goals of bettering myself. Much of the reason for this is that Franklin and I have pretty similar desires to better ourselves and to be very inwardly reflective as to get rid of the internal problems that may cause us fault. Franklin himself described this as a very arduous task that is easy to fail. This own admission by one of the most important figures in history has forced me to mentally prepare for the task at hand. And really focus on specific virtues that I myself would like to work on improving.
I have selected five of these virtues which I have found to be the most important things on which I can improve myself around. The first virtue I chose is resolution, or being able to do with confidence what needs to be done. Often I will not do what needs to be done, because I will get too preoccupied with unimportant things, when I need to be focusing on the things that are important. The second virtue I chose was order, or making sure that I give everything in life its proper time. This goes along with resolution, in that having better order will allow me to really focus on finding what is important. The third virtue I chose was industry, or being as efficient as I can with what I do. I often waste too much time in my day not trying to be as efficient as I could be and this would help out immensely. The fourth virtue was moderation, which is not using anything to excess. For me I think that this would mainly be my phone and technology in general, as I really need to take more frequent breaks from them. The final virtue was justice, which I chose because sometimes I feel that if someone treats me in a certain way for some amount of time then I will not believe in their ability to change and I will not give them the fairness I would give a complete stranger. In conjunction all of these virtues which I would like to share with Ben Franklin will help me to become a better and more efficient person.
I hope that I will have similar success to what Franklin had with his virtues, and I think that careful observation and logging will be important to that success. It is easy to forget what you did in a day, but if you log it in some way you will have that memory with you forever. My hope is that I can come out of this virtue experiment as a better and more virtuous person. I think that it will all come down to if I can complete these virtues in the order that I listed because I can never focus on my justice if I do not have the resolution to make time for the important things in my day and leave time for focusing on virtues. If I can focus on each one of these individually and try and master each one before moving on to the next I will have the best success. I believe that overall I will have good success with this project, because it will force me to be more inwardly, looking at my flaws and where I can improve.
I like your choice of virtues, especially Justice. It’s hard to admit when you aren’t treating people fairly, so I think it’s awesome that you’re trying to change that. Hope all goes well!
I wish you the best of like in your chosen virtues, I think that you will do great things!