Proficiens

deliberate practice advancing toward virtue

I was up this morning at my usual 6AM, came down, made the coffee, took my vitamins and was sitting on my reading couch watching the night begin to break and decided to go out and catch this shot of the last, first light of 2023. That is, of course, the LHH. The Adventure Van is there off to the left, and as I write this, I am sitting by the second floor window on the right. It is also New Year’s Eve, a time to reflect on the past year. 

I have one more photo to take to complete my “Project 365” - a picture a day for 365 days of 2023. I am hoping to go out and catch the last light of 2023 this afternoon from the dock at Jackson’s Landing where I launch my kayak in the warmer months, and sometimes in the colder months if the tide is in and the river is high and not frozen over. If that doesn’t work out, I will use this one. But I am hoping the river shot will be the one. I like daily projects because they force a discipline upon me. Taking a couple of pictures for a couple of days is one thing. But making sure to take a picture every day, regardless of the circumstances - making room for this creative act - regardless of what else is going on, is a challenge. There were many nights when I was wandering my house with my camera (or phone) in hand at 10PM, wondering what I was going to make into a photograph. These were the days when it was hard and not fun. And still I did it. And whether any of the photos are worth looking at or not, I’m proud that I forced myself through that discipline. My wife did the project with me this year, which was great. Had I not had her along, I might have quit a few times this year. It’s good to have company when you are attempting something hard.

Doing hard things came up in the second episode of the podcast I started this year, as most of you know. It was in my interview with Dr. Scott Smith, Chair of the Classics, Italian Studies, and Humanities Department here at UNH. Toward the end of the podcast we talked about reading difficult texts, like Aristotle or Kant. There is a general benefit to engaging with classic texts, many of which require a close and careful reading, and perhaps re-reading and reflection, in order to begin to grasp their value. They are hard to work through the way climbing a mountain is hard, and in the same way it is worth climbing a mountain because it is there, there is something to be said for climbing the thought and lessons of the classics: the act transforms us into a better version of ourselves.

I learned another concept from my interview with Scott - it was the Latin word proficiens. It means advancing, but it was used by the Stoics to refer to a disciple of Stoicism, or more generally, someone who is advancing toward virtue. I’ve been writing about living a worthy life since I started this new project: I would say that another word for this is living a virtuous life, that is, to become a proficiens.

Since we returned to New Hampshire, my wife and I and our children spend Christmas Eve at my father’s house, usually joined by my sister and her family. Sadly, this year my niece came down with a mild case of COVID, and so my sister and her family did not join us, so it was a little more quiet and subdued than usual, but my father has been digitizing many of his old photographs, going back more than 50 years. My kids spent a couple of hours flipping through old photos, many of my father and mother when they were young, many of me and my sister growing up. Aside from how old these made me feel, I noticed a particular pattern in the way I stood, and a wise-ass, irreverent grin I seemed to wear in most of the photos. Honestly, I was taken aback by my own bearing. I remember those days and do not remember feeling inside the arrogance I was projecting to the outside. In fact, just the opposite. 

I recently wrote a post about deliberate practice, and the idea that to make rapid progress, you have to engage not just in practice, as in just doing repetitions, but in deliberate practice - seeking out experiences that will help you refine yourself in the direction you wish to go. I think this idea of deliberate practice does not just apply to sports or the martial arts (as I wrote about), but to life, and to the ultimate goal of life, which is to live virtuously. I think most people get a little better each year without making any particular effort. There is a common trope in criminal justice studies that the best way to reform an offender is a 30th birthday. The truth behind this observation is that most crime is committed by young men, mostly before they turn 30. I think this is generalizable - life happens to us, whether we reach for it or not, and we learn. Since most of the time doing the right thing is better in the long run, the longer we live and have to live with the long run effects of our decisions, the wiser we become. With ordinary effort, we casually advance a little toward virtue, even if we are not deliberate about it. 

I enlisted in the Army National Guard when I was 18, and went on active duty with the Regular Army when I was 22 because I saw those commitments as deliberate practice as a proficiens. I knew those commitments were a means of forcing a discipline on my rather undisciplined young self. The experience of being in the Army was a form of deliberate practice. The Army embodies a teaching and learning organization. There is a culture of development that runs throughout every aspect of it. It is, actually, the thing I miss most about it. I know if I had not joined the Army I would have made gradual progress toward living a more worthy life, in the way that being another year older tends to convey a little more wisdom. But there are years that convey a little learning and years where we grow a lot. Sometimes growth is thrust upon us, but we can also choose to embrace experiences that will engage growth. I’m grateful I chose the Army as a path for my young adulthood. Looking at those pictures, I don’t know what would have come of me. With time I would have become something better, but I feel like the decades I spent in the Army moved me farther and faster along my personal journey. To be clear, we all start somewhere and we are moving toward virtue, so I am not saying I’m all that and a bag of chips. What I’m saying is the Army helped me move farther than I would have on my own. 

This year I chose to do the Project 365 as a means of deliberate practice. I joined the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school, as I have bored you with. And I was deliberate about a number of other things that I hoped would develop me a little more, and move me a little farther along the continuum. There is so far to go, yet. But I look back on 2023 as a year of continuing learning. I hope you also look at 2023 as a year where you moved a little farther along the continuum in your own journey toward virtue. 

As we prepare to ring in 2024, I am thinking about what specific things I will work on to move along the continuum - how I can be more deliberate about it, so that I can move farther than if I just let time and life refine me like the old barrel of whiskey that I am gradually becoming. I hope you are thinking about commitments you can make that will move you as well. What will you commit to in 2024 to help you refine yourself an extra step or two closer to where you are trying to go?

Whatever it is, I wish you a meaningful, connected, competent, new year full of contributions! 

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Addendum: I took a break while writing this post to go take my actual, final picture of the year. Here it is - the last, last light of 2023 - The End.