It’s Your Improvement That Counts

Happiness does not come from having things or from having money. It doesn’t even come from being in a relationship or having children. Happiness comes from being able to be satisfied when you are alone. (This is actually my own take on the Rabbinical injunction to be satisfied with your lot. “Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot,” Pirkei Avot 4:1.) This is because I have found that to live a good life as a person with psychiatric disability, my social life has to be relatively limited. I have many friends, but I have to work in solitude as I have difficulties interacting with other people—and I know it!

And such satisfaction can occur only once you can see that you have improved your character since the last time you thought about the issue. Perhaps only at the new year, perhaps weekly, perhaps daily.

The Jewish word for prayer translates to “examining yourself.” Of course, you may not observe Judaism or indeed any religion at all, but philosophically-minded people throughout the ages have made it their practice, perhaps following the Jewish tradition, to make an account to themselves of where they have improved and how far they think they yet have to progress.

Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American to recommend this practice. But it originated long ago among Jewish rabbis and scholars. It is in Judaism called, “accounting for the soul/chesbon hanefesh.” Perhaps the clearest early-modern version is in Rabbi Bachya Ibn Pakuda’s canonical Duties of the Heart. In essence, a person following chesbon hanefesh keeps a dedicated daily recording of desirable character traits—written on the vertical axis of a chart (or lines in a notebook.) The days of the month are written on the horizontal axis (or across the top of a page. Daily, the adherent checks those traits upon which he or she assesses that it was a successful day. At the end of the month or the quarter, the person tallies the results and competes with past accomplishment to see progress. (There is always some progress because a person using this system is thinking so hard about character development.)