Author: Charlie Duske

I chose my virtues based on what I knew was possible as well as what I knew I needed to work on. I decided that silence was easily my most needed virtue for me to work on. I think I can positively input what I have learned and focused on while working on this blog by continuing to work on these virtues in everyday life. I would like to use my virtues not only to better my life but the people around me. I think the virtue I struggled with the most had to be “order”. Originally I wanted to show my order by keeping a schedule, but I either struggled to make a schedule or follow this schedule. I think the virtue I am most proud about has to be “silence”. If you read my blogs I comment on silence multiple times. It wasn’t necessarily the easiest to work on just because of my personality, but that is why I believe I am so proud about it. I could have wrote about silence for hours, and the examples were endless. I hope I can continue to implement silence in my life going forward. While working on this project I didn’t truly have a plan to implement the virtues everyday. If I would have a had a true plan on how to work on the virtues I believe I would have benefitted much more. I think a way to benefit off this project is by spreading the idea of the virtues. If one person a day works on virtues the world will become a much better place.

Today, November 19 2021 marks the end of this blog journey. It has been an honorable run. Over the last week and a half I struggled heavily to remember to blog every day. If you want a perfect example of growth while blogging, I am writing this with 40 minutes left in school. Over the course of these long 7 hours I have found a couple examples of me showing my virtues. To start, I woke up and instead of falling back asleep I got straight into the shower showing my order. After getting out of the shower I prayed showing my faith and hope. Just recently a friend was making of my blog, but I showed my silence by not responding. An example of sincerity would be lending my mac book charger to a classmate even when I had never talked to him before. Overall for the last day of my blogging career it was definitely a positive. So long blog its been a pleasure.

I worked on silence on Thursday. While in 6th hour marketing I was emailing coaches, and I got a few responses, but fellow classmates did not think as highly of the emails as I did. Two classmates were just being completely rude and disrespectful. Although I was angry and annoyed I decided to keep. my mouth shut and not express my feelings. Even if they were joking I do believe, me not responding and staying relaxed showed my virtue progress. With the last day of blogging tomorrow I plan to work extra hard on virtues.

Today I worked with sincerity and had many examples of me treating people with sincerity and one example I could have worked on sincerity and I didn’t. I’ll start with the bad; while at practice my teammate missed an open net that would have ended training and we would have won, but he missed. I should have been sincere and helped him move on to the next play, but instead yelled at him and just completely ignored his feelings. A good example was when I was working and saw a women outside struggling with her groceries. She looked like she was coming to get ice cream and I recognized that. I ran to the door and opened for her. She had two little kids and had her hands full. I made sure I was extra nice while serving her. It paid off because she gave me a generous tip.

For the first time since starting this blog I could not think of an example for Tuesday, but I remembered one thing. My last virtue is order, and order is something I wanted to work on later in the week when I got busier, but I had the perfect example of order on Tuesday. I had to make time in the afternoon to workout, do homework, and be social. In fourth hour I was thinking how I was going to make time. After thinking for a bit I figured out a schedule. I was gong to workout right after school for an hour and a half, go home and do homework, and then get dinner with someone I hadn’t seen in a long time. Although I didn’t directly work on a virtue I think working on order was extremely important for me.

Waking up on Mondays are always extremely tough. On Monday November 15, I worked on my faith. Faith has always been something that I’ve worked on in my life. Since eighth grade I have been extremely close to God and try to implement him into my daily life. While at our soccer banquet I accepted an award and although I didn’t get to do a speech I knew the first person I was going to thank were the people who helped me through this year and get me to play high school soccer. After thanking them (in my head) I said a small prayer to myself thanking god for what he had done for me in the last year. I am so much happier this year and I tend to thank the people who surround me each day, but forget to thank God, who has been with me forever.

Last weekend I focused on sincerity, I do believe I had many examples of sincerity. The first one that comes to mind is on Saturday morning I went out of my way to go see my friend play in his soccer game. It was 30 minutes away, but he has been one of my best friends forever. After that we went to lunch at Canes, and I offered to pay for his meal. He declined but ended up paying for it anyway. After lunch I went to play in a basketball tournament, and they missed a call on a teammate of mine. Now usually I would argue, but I showed silence and ignored the ridiculous referee. I know that is an example of silence rather than sincerity; I was extremely proud of my decision to keep my anger inside and to not lash out at the underpaid ref. On Sunday I showed my sincerity by offering to help my mom with the gift bags for the soccer banquet on Monday. Overall I think I had a successful weekend virtue wise.

Today was Friday November 12 and today I worked on faith. I realized this morning that I would not be able to make our family prayer on Sunday. To make up for that I decide to pray this morning. I also will pray before bed. I was actually really proud of my decision, because today was the first day I actually though ahead, and based the virtue I wanted to work on based on my reflection. This weekend I am playing in a tournament so I want to focus on sincerity.

Today I worked on silence again. I had multiple positives and maybe a few negatives. Today at lunch I realized my brother switched our lunches. Instead of lashing out at him or making it a big deal I chose silence and decided it was not something to freak out about. I was actually very proud of myself because usually I would have made a big deal about that. The negative I had today was at dodgeball. I was arguing with a teammate and instead of choosing silence I. continued to bicker like a second grader. I want to work on limiting arguments and chose silence more often.

Today I worked on silence. What I consider silence, is the ability to keep my mouth shut when you can’t provide something positive from your words. The first example I have from today was early this morning when my dogs decided to wake up at 530. I was suddenly awoken to them eating on the floor below me. Instead of complaining about it when I went downstairs I said nothing. A failure of silence was this evening. I got out of practice and I had just learned that my friend could not partake in the dodgeball event tomorrow night. Instead of working on silence I unfortunately started a pointless argument with this friend. Overall I did take many positives from today.

The first day of working on my virtues wasn’t my best. I can’t think of an exact example of me using or working on one of my virtues. I know it may sound bad but I think that it’s okay to struggle on the first couple days. With that being said I did pray this morning and will in about 45 minutes so I did practice faith today. It may not have been the most solidified practice of faith, but for the first day I will count it. Going forward I think I decide one virtue to focus on before I go out for the day.

My motivation for writing this blog and keeping up with my virtues via the blogs is to better improve myself, and ultimately perfect myself by the time we are complete. I’m not sure how I compare to Benjamin Franklin, but in a way I think everyone wants to improve themselves. Reading about Franklin’s journey to perfection is a great example of how the higher ups in society continue motivation to become better. 

My first virtue, which I believe will be the easiest for me, is Hope. What I mean by hope is keeping a positive attitude and not looking back on things I can’t change. The virtue comes from the bible and I believe a way I can work on it is by showing a grateful attitude and being hopeful for what is to come. The second virtue I chose is Faith. Faith is another bible virtue, but I think this one will be different for me and maybe a bit harder. A way to work on faith is to pray and spread the word. I’ve never been a huge church goer, but I do still pray and want to keep my faith in God. My third virtue and first of Ben Franklins, is silence. I want to learn how to keep my mouth shut at times and just move on. A way I can work on this is when I disagree with someone either shut up and walk away, or say something positive. Like Franklin said, speak to the benefit of yourself and others. The next one is sincerity. I do believe I am a sincere and nice person, but I think I am still able to improve how nice I am in certain situations. I have problems with being insincere to people I do not care for, and I always feel guilty later. I think I can work on sincerity by asking myself, “will you feel bad about this later?” The last virtue and what I think will be the hardest for me is, order. What I mean by order is in a way patience. I want to focus on just letting things play out. I feel like sometimes I try too hard to have an effect on something when I don’t need to. At times I want myself to focus on just taking a step back and relaxing. Let things play out and see what happens.

I truly want to focus on my work with the virtues and keep myself accountable. I think this is an awesome project to work on, and hopefully I can work on these things outside of just this project. I am confident I can knock and be satisfied with my work for three out of the five virtues. At the same time though, I want to work on all five and at some point in my life, look back thankful I did this.