Temperance

A public choice

After a lively rehearsal clip, you reach for the desk’s oversized confetti lever to celebrate again. The first burst has already covered the sandwich. You close the lever’s guard and return to the next verse. Even the lunch has received more publicity than it requested.

An invented illustrative scene.

Temperance gives…

Moderating an appetite can recover attention for craft and relationships. A release, appearance or conversation has a purpose beyond extending the surge it produces. Temperance helps you choose a fitting amount without making enjoyment itself suspect.

What Temperance makes possible

You can make room for a good encore and also recognize an ending. A considered decision to stop can protect the next session’s work, leave others time to contribute and let an audience carry something away rather than merely await the next escalation.

Temperance: finding the balance

The fitting amount depends on the occasion. An encore requested within a planned performance differs from manufacturing outrage simply to keep a feed moving.

Temperance in ordinary life

A promotional week

An imagined creator chooses a few informative updates instead of inventing a dispute to renew interest. The worthy act is giving the work a fair introduction and allowing attention to settle.

A shared meal

Put aside the urge to retell the successful appearance long enough to hear what happened in someone else’s day.

A practice session

Enjoy a replay that teaches you something, then return to the part that needs work.

Nearby virtues, different work

Equanimity

Equanimity concerns steadiness as reactions change; Temperance moderates the desire for more of an attractive experience.

Nonpossessiveness

Nonpossessiveness releases unnecessary control over others’ attention; Temperance governs your own appetite for it.

Temperance and its counterfeits

A dramatic deprivation challenge can be a counterfeit of Temperance: the performer turns refusal into another publicity event. Moderation returns attention to the work instead of finding a new way to display control.

Occasional indulgence disguised as earned entitlement counterfeits Temperance when a host demands everyone prolong the celebration regardless of their needs. Enjoy the occasion within limits the group can freely accept.

How to cultivate Temperance

• Notice what you want another burst of attention to provide.
• Give an enjoyable activity a stopping point suited to the occasion.
• Leave an interval in which no public response needs to be checked or manufactured.

Try it today

Choose a harmless enjoyable publicity-related activity, such as replaying a friendly performance clip. Decide a fitting stopping point and turn to another chosen task. Do not use food deprivation or a treatment change as an exercise.

Consider what the pause made room for. It is a practice in choosing, not a test of how little pleasure you can tolerate.

Avoid deprivation, moralized eating or rigid challenges. Adapt the practice to your needs; pleasure and rest do not diminish your worth.

Questions worth returning to

• What deserves attention after this pleasure?
• Am I extending the occasion or feeding an appetite?

Keep the practice proportionate

Avoid deprivation, moralized eating or rigid challenges. Adapt the practice to your needs; pleasure and rest do not diminish your worth.

These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

Quotations and further reading

Seven readings, one for each day. All remain available here. Historical arguments and fictional dialogue are identified in their source notes.

1. … He that is too eager to be rich, generally endangers his fortune in wild adventures, and uncertain projects; and he that hastens too speedily to reputation, often raises his character by artifices and fallacies, decks himself in colours which quickly fade, or in plumes which accident may shake off, or competition pluck away.

   Samuel Johnson · The Rambler, volume II
   (zero-based); exact span 128–454
   Samuel Johnson · Preserved Project Gutenberg digital transcription of the linked historical English work; no first-print collation asserted

   Johnson joins haste for wealth with haste for reputation. His warning about fading colours suits the confetti lever: celebration becomes disproportionate when it starts displacing the work it celebrates.

2. … The pleasure of being caressed, distinguished, and admired, easily seduces the student from literary solitude. …

   Samuel Johnson · The Rambler, volume II
   (zero-based); exact span 89–199
   Samuel Johnson · Preserved Project Gutenberg digital transcription of the linked historical English work; no first-print collation asserted

   Johnson identifies praise as a competing pleasure for a student’s attention. The article keeps pleasure and celebration available while asking whether the next invitation serves the chosen work.

3. … It is impossible to supply wants as fast as an idle imagination may be able to form them, or to remove all inconveniencies by which elegance refined into impatience may be offended. …

   Samuel Johnson · The Rambler, volume II
   (zero-based); exact span 462–643
   Samuel Johnson · Preserved Project Gutenberg digital transcription of the linked historical English work; no first-print collation asserted

   The endlessly renewed wants in Johnson’s essay make a useful contrast to enough. This is a moral reflection on indulgence, not a claim that every inconvenience or unmet need is imaginary.

4. Their two confidential friends, Mr Shepherd, who lived in the neighbouring market town, and Lady Russell, were called on to advise them; and both father and daughter seemed to expect that something should be struck out by one or the other to remove their embarrassments and reduce their expenditure, without involving the loss of any indulgence of taste or pride.

   Jane Austen · Persuasion
   (zero-based); exact span 0–363
   Fictional narrator · Preserved Project Gutenberg digital transcription of the linked historical English work; no first-print collation asserted

   Sir Walter and Elizabeth want financial embarrassment removed without losing any indulgence. Austen’s satire makes the contradiction visible; moderation needs an actual change of proportion, not merely a tidier image.

5. The Tirynthians, according to an ancient story reported by Athenaeus, becoming conscious that their trick of laughter at everything and nothing was making them unfit for the conduct of serious affairs, appealed to the Delphic oracle for some means of cure. …

   George Eliot · Impressions of Theophrastus Such
   (zero-based); exact span 0–256
   Theophrastus, reflective fictional narrator · Preserved Project Gutenberg digital transcription of the linked historical English work; no first-print collation asserted

   Eliot retells a story attributed to Athenaeus about laughter becoming a disabling habit. It is a literary ancient anecdote, not verified reportage or a treatment prescription; the point here is a pleasure that no longer yields to the occasion.

6. … To all these communications I replied that my life-work was at Tuskegee; and that whenever I spoke it must be in the interests of Tuskegee school and my race, and that I would enter into no arrangements that seemed to place a mere commercial value upon my services.

   Booker T. Washington · Up from Slavery
   (zero-based); exact span 330–595
   Booker T. Washington · Preserved Project Gutenberg digital transcription of the linked historical English work; no first-print collation asserted

   Washington describes choosing Tuskegee’s purpose over lucrative lecture arrangements. His own vocational decision does not condemn paid public work; it asks whether an attractive offer fits the purpose one has chosen.

7. But, after all this is said, the time when I get the most solid rest and recreation is when I can be at Tuskegee, and, after our evening meal is over, can sit down, as is our custom, with my wife and Portia and Baker and Davidson, my three children, and read a story, or each take turns in telling a story. …

   Booker T. Washington · Up from Slavery
   (zero-based); exact span 0–306
   Booker T. Washington · Preserved Project Gutenberg digital transcription of the linked historical English work; no first-print collation asserted

   Washington’s account gives shared family stories an honored place beside public work. Temperance can protect an ordinary good without demanding deprivation or copying his schedule.

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