Self-control: An Endangered Virtue

Crossing The Line

How often do you see someone losing their temper? How regularly do you witness a scene caused by some adult acting like a child? How often is it that the average person makes a decision based on a feeling and without facts? I think if we really paid attention, we’d find the results very harrowing.

Yet, we do it all the time. Instead of harnessing our emotions, we react without thought, we act on impulse instead of intelligence. It is the rare person, in fact, that bridles their tongue, and is enveloped in complete and quiet patience. Every day, without consideration for ourselves or others, we cross the line from reasonable to irrational, from calm to irascible. Indeed, it seems like the easy to anger outnumber the hard to provoke by a hundred to one.

What is self-control?

It is the ability to control emotions, the ability to change the self or to be steadfast (not just in adversity but in all things), the ability to stay convicted of certain beliefs or to adopt others, and above all, it is the ability to place reason above passion. It is considered the restraint one excercises over one’s impulses and desires, and yes, … feelings.

If I obey the impulse to yell at my daughter, have I controlled myself? Of course not! If I allow how I feel about a topic to overrule my senses, have I controlled myself? Never! If I follow my lust for another woman, have I controlled myself? Not in a million years!

There is a limit to the amount of pleasure, the amount of passion and energy for life that we should allow ourselves. Over-indulgence is not good for our well-being or the well-being of others, therefore we should be placing limits on our passions. Go overboard and people are hurt and our own message of life is tainted. We must know where and when we should show restraint.

Heedless

People who say that they can’t do it are simply unwilling to believe that they can or are not willing to try. People who say that they can’t control their feelings are simply creatures of habit who have given themselves over to baser instincts. But, we humans were given the gift of reason, the ability to put mind over matter, control and conscience over heedless passion. We humans are not part of the animal kingdom; we were separated from it by the growth of civilization; we do not have the need to answer to our animalistic instincts. In fact, we have a duty to our kind to behave as humans should — with some semblance of humanity, some sense of reasonable restraint.