The Most Important Virtue

What’s the most important virtue? Is it charity? Kindness? Tolerance? Faith? Perhaps. But here is a way to look at the question that personalizes the answer and tailor fits it to you: The most important virtue is the missing trait needed to counter the worst character flaw you have. What is the most egregious flaw? The one that is hurting others the most.

Are you a lying cheat? Honesty or perhaps integrity is the trait most in need of your immediate attention. Is your anger problem destroying relationships left and right? Patience is the virtue with your name on it! Maybe you find yourself without hope or prospect in life. And perhaps you find yourself most often wishing for better opportunities and better things in life while reclined in comfortable repose before the boobtube, bag of chips in one hand, remote in the other. May I suggest, then, that just maybe a good dose of get-up-and-go might be the best moral medicine for such an ailment?

The point here is, I suppose, that Mother Teresa hardly needed retraining on love or charity. She had it in spades. Gandhi hardly needed to work on his humility or selflessness. So with each of us. We all have our unique moral flaws. It’s part of the human condition.

But there is no cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all answer to the moral question either. What is most important for me to work on may be entirely different for you because, well, I’m me and you’re you. Duh! The people in my life may be most hurt by one or one set of character flaws totally different from the one(s) plaguing your family members and friends.

In the end, the issue seems to be what we are doing with those flaws. Do we keep them tucked away in a back pocket, hidden from plain view, but available for easy use when desired? Or have we entered them as permanent features on grand To-Do-Eventually lists?

Well, today is a good day to remove from back pockets old dusty lapses in character and erase from permanent To-do lists those flaws that seem to keep popping up and hurting those we love. Write in pencil because it won't stay long this time!

So go look in the mirror ... today ... right now ... and take an accounting. Set a goal or two. Notice what you do and how you do it in relation to the flaw of concern. Then begin to make strides toward mastering the trait most needed as a check on that weakness, one character flaw at a time … one bite at a time … beginning with that one that is most keeping you from being the person you most want ... and ought ... to be.

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