I am hard on myself, Sweet Reader. I am an ill human, sometimes. I am not virtuous or even good. I am in practice. I am a student. I am a child. Today I come to ask you to be a witness and listen as I give confession to You, to entreat you to forgive my nature—the ways that I am and have been—and to hold space for my suffering. The simplest way for me to present this is by utilising the frame of those Seven ‘Deadly’ Vices that so haunt our culture but deserve such intimate consideration for our betterment and well-being. The purpose of this confession is not to be artsy or cringe or prove a point or anything so facetious. I have come to see what is suffered here, and to relate my own suffering to the wider world. Thank you for witnessing me.
Lust
You, forgive my nature, for I have erred. In my sensual practice, I have been dishonest with those whom I love. I have coveted the space of others while my own space withered and desiccated and I have acted on impulse rather than reason. I have been inconsistent in my intimacy, my vulnerability, and my affections. I have not been a noble lover. When my identity was broken, I sank into the disrepair of longing, and I did things that served me without a consideration for the sanctity of others’ desires or boundaries. I served what I thought was good in me rather than what is good in my relationship with others. I buried my suffering in abstract pleasure and hoped it would revive the parts of me that were killed. But it did not. Instead, I hurt those I was closest too and then failed to be honest about the hurt they did not yet know they possessed. When they discovered their hurt, they discovered it had grown tenfold and that I was the cause. In this way, I have been selfish and disreputable, and now I covet the guilt of my insufficiency. When I have conducted myself in love and desire, I have sought only to serve others and to ask nothing of them, but I find that I have instead taken of them while reluctant to serve and taken of others’ offerings while reluctant to take of what has been offered to me. I have done this three times, and once I have been used in this manner by another, but it is only the two most recent incidents that weigh so heavy on my suffering now. The first of these was done out of sorrow and a desire for self-knowledge—an arrogant need to find security in my sexual identity while my quotidian identity collapsed around me. The second was done out of intimate insecurity with a paraphilia for which I fret to be judged, and it was done out of a desire to be seen in that expression despite the abundant patience and compassion of the partner who suffered for my actions. In these two incidents I fail to recognize myself, and so I must give them up to become a better practitioner and a better love to those whom I love and who love me.
This is the nature I ask you to witness, and for which I must forgive myself.
Gluttony
You, forgive my nature, for I have erred. I have partaken in an overindulgent manner those things which bring me comfort in times of duress and oblivion in times of overstimulation. With cannabis, my relationship and understanding of the plant’s intelligence is strong but my habit for imbibing has been occasionally unmanageable. It is not that I am reckless or wanting but that I have become dependent regularly on the plant despite what my requirements have been. My lungs ache and my voice ripples with smoke. Too, have I often eaten my anxiety or sorrow in the evening needlessly, hunting for food that does not sustain me but only brings me empty comfort; and, I have engaged in entertainment and content that does not serve me well beyond ephemeral comfort. I recognize my fortune in my capacity to do these things, to have the resources to do them, and for that reason I aim to adopt a more mindful relationship with the consumption of these things. I do not believe it is a bad thing to imbibe or to eat, but I know I must—for myself—respect the tenants of moderation. I am fortunate to have practiced such a vice, and for that reason I recite these vices. I was born into a land of plenty, and so it is the duty of my fortune to be cognizant of my position and to overcome the ubiquity of pleasure in my life. Despite this philosophy, I struggle.
This is the nature I ask you to witness, and for which I must forgive myself.
Avarice
You, forgive my nature, for I have erred. I have wanted beyond reason and taken without cause. I have consumed more than I knew to use. I have accumulated too much in my wandering and I have an abundance that does not serve me or my fellow humans. The fortune of my birth has afforded me privileges I did not ask for and so I have been ignorant of their gift and of my responsibilities in possessing their gift. I live in a world of things, and it is the way of this world that those things ought to be possessed and consumed and acquired, and so it is also the nature of this world that makes my nature. Yet, I have guilt for the injustice of this world and its things. I have guilt for the books I have never read and the trinkets that gather dust. They fail to serve the Earth, and so they fail to serve me. What am I to do with them? I do not covet them but retain them still. How am I to contend with this world of things and their possession? I try to practice a mindful consumption, and I seek nothing from sources that are disreputable and cause suffering. Yet, I know my ignorance is vast and so I have felt a creeping apathy for this way of being. Despite all reservation, I am resolved to simplify and detach myself from possession. For this reason, I consider this vice. I recognize that someone must do this, and so it must be me.
This is the nature I ask you to witness, and for which I must forgive myself.
Acedia
You, forgive my nature, for I have erred. In the past, in my daily living I have slipped into an angst without remorse, an apathy without a practice for compassion. I have closed my heart to my loved ones and closed my thoughts also. I have wiled in turmoil without confidence in those I cared for most, and who have most cared for me. I did not open myself to their trust. I did not let them into the sorrow of my longing or to let them understand the quiet of my suffering. In this, I pushed loved ones away from me and said things that hurt them. In my actions, I did not practice as an intelligent human but as a fickle, unbothered animal hiding in its den. I made excuses for my mental state and denied pursuing the help I was warranted. This was an incalculable experience, a deep practice in philosophy, but it has left me guilty and mistrustful of my own mind. How can I be sure I will be present for others in times of duress? I think now that there is no ‘wisdom,’ but only the process of becoming. I aim to be a philosopher of this process and so I consider this vice here. Knowing that I am capable of such derision affords me the clarity to practice betterment for all. Knowing my own suffering affords me the space to take on others’. Yet, I fear I will become apathetic again. Thus, I lay bare my fear.
This is the nature I ask you to witness, and for which I must forgive myself.
Wrath
You, forgive my nature, for I have erred. When I have grown wrathful, I have denied my needs and refused to listen to the wisdom of anger. For this reason, I have shunned the anger of others without constructing the space that would accept their anger as the unsingable aspect of their personhood. I have denied my capacity for rage and so my rage has rotted in me and so the rot of my rage has spread to my sadness. I do not value anger, and so I cannot use it. But what do I do with this resource that is better used by others? When I have felt anger, I have not felt the passion for it that others so readily give themselves. Often, I have maintained frustration or irritation, but never have they calcified and become the discomfort of wrath. I do not seek to exercise the will of my anger on the world. There is enough here already. It is a seed I cannot plant, and so I have hoarded seeds of wrath while deriding others’ blooming rages. There is no word that quells these weeds beyond the act of holding space and patience for them. I consider this vice in the context of others’ gardens: that I may practice compassion toward the anger that I sometimes find therein. I want to be a safe place for anger as I would be for all other virtue and vice in my fellow animals. I do not want to disdain anger, but to quell it where it spits itself forth, gently and with grace. It is difficult to do this sometimes. I do not like anger.
This is the nature I ask you to witness, and for which I must forgive myself.
Envy
You, forgive my nature, for I have erred. In my handling of others’ jealousy, I have been cruel and inconsistent. I have degraded others’ trust without the space to give them reprieve for their suffering and all the while expected that they should keep to the centre of their own longing and keep their envy in line for me. I have been duplicitous and self-serving in my efforts to undermine the envy of others. When a jealous human has come to me to speak of their jealousy, I have told them that they must destroy their jealousy. I have told them that their jealousy is not their friend. For, I do not know envy: they are not an ally of mine. When others speak to me of their struggle with jealousy, I do not know how to cope with their suffering. Like wrath, I have found envy to be an ugliness in others, and so I have struggled to make space for the ugliness in others. I have found envy to be a poison that kills both the drinker and the poisoner. I have found envy to be a thing which makes all the world and the love of the world a narrow and shadowy place filled with paranoia and mistrust. For these reasons, I have struggled to hold space for the jealousy of others out of fear for the quality of their presence. This is why I must address envy here and express my ignorance for it when it has invaded my life through others. It is an unwelcome guest while its host is often ever welcome to me. How can I rectify this paradox? In others, there is so often envy while in me I only find the calm pool of longing. I have failed to make the space for envy that would permit me to uproot the foe rather than pluck its leaves. For this reason, I consider the vice of envy and its role in my life, and my failure to contend with it in others.
This is the nature I ask you to witness, and for which I must forgive myself.
Hubris
You, forgive my nature, for I have erred. Always there is another path and more to learn and always am I seeking the next without first rooting myself in what I am. It has been said that pride is the greatest evil, the most demonic of the vices, and so I have done well to keep away from pride, but pride invades unexpected places in me. I do not think well of myself most days, but I often maintain a surety of opinion that reveals the hubris that finds my weakness and plants itself therein. I have this year been brought low by my hubris when I shared opinions that were untethered to my unknowing and wrote words that were misguided by my insecurity. In recent years, I have succumbed to my hubris when I was too afraid to rise above my suffering and seek aid from those who could help me, when I failed to confide my suffering in those who mattered to me most and who would have shared the burden in their love for me. I have alienated myself from my kin through hubris, through the guilt that I feel for all that I have erred in. I have seen hubris in my own self-flagellation, in my guilt and in my apathy. I have known hubris through my incapacity to resolve difficult relationships, difficult situations, and difficult hypocrisies within. I am not immune to any of these vices, but through hubris it is suggested that none of these vices matter, that nothing matters or no one. Thus, I have come to understand the danger of hubris and to excise it where it has festered in me. This is why I consider this vice: it is the taproot of all the others, and therefore I struggle with hubris through my struggle with all the others.
This is the nature I ask you to witness, and for which I must forgive myself.
I hope you have enjoyed this honesty, though obscurant it may be in language. I wanted to practice this openly and in writing, and the Distended Orthonym is intended to be a safe space for us to do such things. I invite all to consider their relationship to their vice, especially where it overlaps with others’ modes of living. We deserve to be better for our loved ones, and for ourselves. We deserve to care more and to strive for caring more both for our loved ones and for ourselves. A better world starts with self-cultivation. I hope you have a lovely weekend, Sweet Reader.