Virtue and Patience
In order to survive these days, there need to be at least some standards
and goals of morality in a person's life. Moral excellence is definitely hard
to achieve, but is something worth while to attempt. Personally, there are many
distractions and obstructions the present day provides, creating a difficulty of
direction in my own life. I need to overcome obstacles such as peer pressure in
order to become a confident, successful person. The present day provides
impediments which I believe I can overcome by way of morality and virtue. I have chosen to work on more patience in my life.
According to Aristotle, for every virtue there are two vices. One is in excess and the other being deficit. Patience is a deficiency in my life. In having barely any patience, I am often stressed out and make more of simple situations. Aristotle would call this vice impatience. On the other end of the spectrum, the excess of patience is being passive. Aristotle and Plato, it was all about having balance in your life. I believe this theory is still in tact today. What I am striving for is not passivity, it is a moderate amount of patience, not too much and not too little, but just enough to make me more of a moral individual.
The hard part about being virtuous is not practicing virtue sometimes but mastering it and doing it consistently. I have always been impatient and it would be extremely difficult for me to master being patient. One of Aristotle’s points about being a virtuous person is not doing everything well but doing what you do well and doing it consistently.
Patience is defined as “good natured tolerance of delay or incompetence.” (www.dictionary.com) for me, this definition does the word a world of just...
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...s outside and we ended up waiting for and hour for him to come back. I was going to flip out and tell my mom I wasn’t going to do this and that we should just leave and come back tomorrow but I remembered this essay and my goal of becoming more patient. So I put on my headphones and I went for a walk to find my cat, when I finally found him I was so excited for myself, I really felt like I accomplished something.
For me this was a gratifying process and I actually enjoyed the journaling and paper. I think I could have put a little more effort into the specific instances. But over all it was alright for me. Before this I would have never noticed what lack of patience I had and how annoying it must be for the people around me. I’m excited to continue being a more virtuous person and improving my character through practicing more patience.
According Aristotle, a virtuous person will always use reason and intellect, and effortlessly make the correct decisions in every situation. They have their hexis in the correct place, and they have truly lived and struggled. With a virtuous person, life will have not been easy, and a virtuous person will have had to experience difficult times and learn from these experiences. These experiences are what will make them a virtuous person. For example, a person who had lived their life in poverty, then makes the decision to work and study to get a high paying job. With this, they dedicate a great deal of their time and money to helping the homeless. This person would be an example of what a virtuous person, their soul has had struggled, and without this they would have not become this person. They need to have this struggle in order to become a virtuous person. With a virtuous person, they are naturally a good person.
While readers can agree virtue is a trait one must obtain, opinions bifurcate how one does so. Some people surmise that by simply avoiding evil, one is virtuous; others reckon that one must do good in addition to avoiding evil to acquire virtue.
I will need to overcome some obstacles in order to accomplish my goals. Family obligations will challenge my time management and multitasking skills. Procrastination is one of the biggest obstacles I face. I will need to develop more patience as I feel demands of the family encroaching on my professional goals. I tend to be shortsighted and allow myself to feel overwhelmed rather than being able to keep everything in perspective.
These traits have helped me to accomplish many career and educational goals as well as helped me to develop long lasting relationships that have sustained me up until the last year. It seems that hard work and determination are essential in accomplishing almost any goal that a leader sets their sights on. It is my hope that these characteristics will help me to persevere through the difficult times that life and school will thrust upon me. Thus I hope to use my strengths to help me steer the course of my educational and personal goals thus learning how to lead others and myself through turbulent times with grace and dignity. Consequently, my biggest weaknesses and hindrances in leading myself and others are my stubbornness and hesitation to recognize when I am wrong. Good leaders need to know when to admit they are wrong thus allowing them to reevaluate the situation and ask for help if needed. It seems that effective leaders know where their weaknesses lie and can ask for help when needed. This helps them to effectively achieve tasks leading towards long term goals because they know what they can and cannot do. I tend to be a control freak and want to do everything myself, and this is not an effective way to lead. I will need to learn to trust and rely on others to pull
Throughout the years, I hardly believed in my capabilities in school and in achieving my ambitions. You see I am not one of those cool kids who blatantly don’t want to do anything, in fact, I was worse. When opportunities decides to knock on my doorstep, I simply decline hoping that luck doesn’t go my way. It is because I was afraid to change my status which I was already comfortable with my life. Now that I am more educated I’m seeing a different point of view, a different view of living, which is achieving great things in life and surpassing anything that may come my way. In my path towards a higher education I have passed obstacles such as injury, problems with self-esteem, and transportation.
...dless of what I am trying to accomplish. I feel that I am much better now, in persuading someone through my writings; which would definitely come in handy in the future. The responsibility I have gained during this experience is incredible and has taught me to be a much more organized person. During this semester I was taught a process of how to write a paper and organize it. I found that all of these responsibilities have made me realize that I could definitely take the next step forward in my academic career. Each new experience I involve myself in has made me continue to grow and constantly learn something new. I am someone who has never really enjoyed English classes in the past and I when I registered for English 101 I only saw it as a requirement to graduate but I really did enjoy this English course and I know that it was something that was worthwhile for me.
...pparent reason is not the patience that one should accept, but one should be patient for certain things like a Master's Degree or a higher position at work. Like the earlier example of one who where to obtain wealth through illegal activities. This person did not have patience to make an honest living. Patience will lead to making good honest decisions that in turn reward in a way that will certainly be most satisfying.
It’s fairly easy for me to go charging into something without thinking about my actions or the consequences. I have found that it is much more difficult to stop, consider the options and find all of the facts. Patience’s is not an easy thing to put into practice, it is something that takes time. Over time I grew more patient and more understanding of situations and people, which has helped me in both my job and in my everyday
...y are not virtuous and therefore their action is not considered virtuous. This simply is not true. It seems that the action should define the act not the person. In a big way aiming at the mean makes people better, but it is not the only thing that exists. In other words, by striving for perfection people often do very well and even their best. This can be considered virtuous. Virtuosity is not as a narrow goal as Aristotle spells it out to be. Aristotle in essence equates virtuosity with a grade of 100, but the majority of people do not receive 100’s all the time. They strive for 100’s, but in doing so they score 82. This is not 100, but it is still considered good and in a sense would be considered virtuous. Concluding, in America today virtue exists on a scale of maybe 70-100, resulting in degrees of virtue, but all encompassing the status of virtue. If virtuosity was held to the strict standards of Aristotle, humans would never act virtuously. Although still a minority, people of virtuous character exist more than as would be spelled out by Aristotle. Aristotle was on the right path, but he made his argument too specific, and as a result made virtue something that it is not.
Procrastination is hard for me, mainly because I have a bad habit of waiting to do an assignment closer
Virtue Ethics Virtue ethics is a theory used to make moral decisions. It does not rely on religion, society or culture; it only depends on the individuals themselves. The main philosopher of Virtue Ethics is Aristotle. The. His theory was originally introduced in ancient Greek.
.... My faced turned pale, I knew for sure I was one of those exceptions. He began to discretely pass our papers back to us. Everyone was getting his or her papers except me. Sure enough I was on the bottom of the pile. I didn’t even want to look at it. While everyone was asking their friends how they had done, I just sat there. Griff then asked me how I did and I replied, “I dunno, you tell me” and handed him my paper. He looked at it and said, “Damn you beat me” I was shocked I looked at it; I had received a 97%. I just felt as though I wanted to jump out of my seat and scream. I would have had a 100 except for a few spelling errors, probably due to how fast I had written the final copy. Disregarding those lost 3 points, I was ecstatic. My paper was a work of art to me I wanted to frame it and hang it on my wall at that point. As time went on that excitement wore off and I realized it just wasn’t a paper I had written, it was a story along with an instructional guide I had written in my mind on how to write a paper. From that point on I knew I could tackle any paper those teachers could throw at me and it was all thanks to Mr. Mieckowski and his inspirationally destructive red pen.
My greatest weakness is being able to say no. due to the energetic person that I am, I tend to take on tasks that are required of me and even beyond me. I view it this way of not wanting to appear negative or a lazy person when I say no. This in turn creates lots of stress and pressure in me due to my effort to get things done even when it is not convenient. I am currently working on this weakness and learning how to politely refuse tasks when am over stressed. Being over stressed reduces the quality of care given to patients and that is why I only plan to embark on tasks that I could finish at a time, rather than taking numerous that I would perform poorly in. This would help my nursing career as I would able to provide great and quality care to my patients due to me focusing on one task at a time and giving in my best to
Writing this paper has been rewarding to me. It has helped me come to know a different me. Set goals for myself and helped me put things into perspective.
For example, going to school. Some challenges come from trying to understand a difficult subject and dealing with the judgment from others at school. This requires patience because tutoring takes the majority of everyone’s time and can sometimes cause frustration. Having patience and tolerance gives the mindset of working hard and achieving the goal desired. Patience also helps with judgment from others because that judgment can cause discouragement. Having patience will give the mindset of realizing that in the end, all the events and situations happening at the moment, will not matter in the future. In the end, patience will help in giving encouragement and hope that will help overcome the judgment of others. Waiting for something also requires patience and tolerance. In The Most Dangerous Game, Rainsford was trapped on a tropical island and was forced to stay with his life on the line. He managed to come across a man named General Zaroff. General Zaroff was a hunting addict and he loved to hunt humans. Rainsford wanted to get off the island but he had to be patient. Instead of almost getting killed by General Zaroff, he decided to be patient and tolerate or play along with General Zaroff’s little game. This was rewarding for him because Rainsford won the game with flying colors and was able to live. Rainsford was able to leave the island and go back to his normal life by being patient. Having patience was rewarding and he was able to tolerate the time, and the situation, in order for him to escape to his