The Greatest Virtue – You Keep What You Give Away

“The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.” ~ Aristotle

Perhaps the finest mind found the simplest way to explain the greatest virtue known to humanity.

~ You keep what you give away ~ 

It was Aristotle’s contention that moral excellence is found in those acts which impart the greatest good on the greatest number of people.

Whoever you are ~ Wherever you are ~ Whatever you do ~ You always have something to give.

In my search for virtuous people I learned they can be found anywhere, even in the state penitentiary.

Let me share a story.

I was at an AA meeting at the state penitentiary for a group of newly arrived convicts with substance abuse issues. My sponsor had arranged for a group of us volunteers to participate.

I’d been sober for only a few months and he thought it would be good for me to attend in order to show me how it was possible to stay sober even in the most trying of circumstances.

It completely blew my mind.

First of all, just getting into the prison was no mean feat. I walked through corridor after corridor with locked doors slamming hard and loud behind me.

It truly is one of the most scary and claustrophobic experiences you might ever imagine.

Then, of course there were men, so many serving time for violent crimes, in the toughest of environments. The idea of serving years and decades in such a world was quite unimaginable to me.

So by the time I found my seat in the meeting I felt quite overwhelmed.

The chair of the meeting was an inmate who introduced himself as Bob. He’d been sober 25 years, his entire time of incarceration. He was serving consecutive life sentences for murder with no possibility of parole.

He said the one thing in life he knew for certain was that he would die in prison and he’d long since made peace with that fact.

“Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.” ~ Richard Lovelace

Bob got started by having each of us share just how we got to that meeting.

I heard story after story of how one drunken act resulted in catastrophic consequences and, as we rounded the table, I knew the question would soon fall upon me.

I shared with the group the fight I had outside a Washington DC bar and thought, “What if I had won that fight and had maimed my assailants? Would anybody have believed that I was the victim?”

Probably not.

All I could think was how fate turned in my direction that night. It was ONLY because of that quirk of history that I was on the outside looking in. Just one more of the many “There, but for the grace of God, go I” moments that I have come to know in my life.

The old timers in the meeting were passionate about how, in sobriety:

  • life became livable
  • reality became acceptable
  • pain became tolerable 

Several of the inmates recounted how they’d come to find family in prison, all because they had been given something they were required to give away.

Had Aristotle poked his head in on this meeting he would have seen men of great virtue imparting tender loving mercy on men in desperate need of goodness in their lives.

They were saying, “Come join us in a sober walk and we’ll protect one another — until death us do part.”

Aristotle would have gotten an eyeful of moral excellence.

Bob and his band of 12-steppers demonstrated that virtue is often found on the other side of vice.

It was in the act of giving of themselves that they’d found a reason for living.

I looked around that table and saw men who craved what I craved — the ability to live happy, joyous and free.

And to think, some of these men had found that IN PRISON. It was a stunning experience for me.

Aristotle was right: the greatest virtue is found in making one’s life useful to another.

My virtuous friends at the state penitentiary would say it’s the very purpose of life itself.

Amen.

Just a thought…

Pat

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