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Someone confessed in a letter an experience that could be summarized more or less in these words: "The desire to do good is in my power, but not to realize it. Since I don’t do the good I want, but I do the evil that I do not want ... ". This experience somehow accompanies us along the path of life. It's funny when a baby starts to eat alone, literally his mouth is drooling, he takes the spoon trying to get some of his favourite pulp and in the midway his spoon gets empty, the pulp all over the table and his mouth open. The same happens when he tries to take his first steps, when he learns to ride a bike, when he tries to score his first basket in basketball ... he wants, but he can’t, tries but fails to do well. Obviously, over time, after trying and trying again, the picture changes, the slurry is no longer falls halfway, no longer gives tumbled with the bike. These and many other examples reaffirm us the adage that practice makes perfect. In other words, we could say that the human being is a creature of habit, to the extent that repeats and repeats an action starts to take place with increasing ease, until finally there comes a moment when it comes automatically, almost without thinking.
And this applies to almost everything in life. Obviously not everything, because there are everyday actions like breathing or sleeping when tired that we do instinctively. However we lean how to do things, which are not instinctive, consciously or unconsciously, with practice, with repetition of acts. And once we've practiced a lot we own that conduct so we do it in a natural way, as if it was a second instinct. Thus the child who was tottering on the first steps and struck twenty times by learning to skate, can then literally fly and do stunts as if born with the skateboard on his feet. And for that reason the kid who has been twenty years biting his nails or eating his mucous, makes fools of himself the first time his bride’s parents ask him to dinner, although he had intended not to do it in public.
In the world of ethics this is even more decisive. The experience of Paul de Tarso told in his letter to the Romans attests him; desires good but has difficulty doing the good he wants. Why? Very easy, because he hasn’t acquired the habit needed to do so. When a person has decided to do good in life, to be ethical, consistent, generous, good intentions are not enough, they are the start, such as New Year's resolutions, but then came everyday practice, the constant effort, tenacity to persevere in the path set out and arrive in time, to be virtuous. As we cultivate the virtues, these are rooted in us deeper and deeper, reaching the moment in which we don’t just do good things, but we ourselves have become good in the fullest sense of the word.
But it is also possible to follow a different path. Instead of cultivating the virtues, that is, positive habits that improve our being, we can get carried away by apathy and complacency, we can find the easier or pleasant things, things that satisfies our pride or ambition. Gradually these behaviours are rooted in us, starting to full of vices, habits that do not refine our being, becoming in mediocre or even evil people, people who do not do the good they want, but the evil who doesn’t want.
The author has a BA in Philosophy from the Universidad Panamericana, Master in Senior Management by the Universidad Anahuac and an MBA from Texas Tech University; additionally studied Classical Humanities in Salamanca, Spain, Philosophy in Rome, Italy, and Theology at Oxford, England. He has taught Ethics courses in high school, undergraduate and graduate students. It is a founding member of AMPI Imdosoc section Chiapas Tuxtla Gutierrez. He currently heads the office of RE / MAX Real Estate Comprehensive Tuxtla Gutierrez.
For any comment to the author, please write to franciscozepeda@remax.net
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