Edward's Diary Entry 50 - Virtue 3. Steadfastness / Perseverance. What to do about laziness and impatience?

Indolence, laziness, giving up, impatience, too much free reign to senses and passions…

The vices enumerated are from listening too much to the body, to desires and feelings… Leaving for tomorrow what can be done today, saying I am tired, sleepy, hot, cold, etc. and cannot continue. We are uneducated in the fullest sense. We were told to identify with the body, the physical realm, and that there is nothing else. Oh yes, a mind that has to absorb man-made information. But Google provides enough of that now. Education does not mean being stuffed with information. Education originally meant “bringing out from within…” (ex-ducere). What is there to bring out from within and to follow? Obviously it is more than sitting in a classroom and memorising information. There is (1) bodily training – becoming dexterous at a skill with the whole body or a part of it. There is (2) lower or logical mind training – becoming able to use the mind, understand words and meanings, apply logic to problems and solve them, interact with the physical world. There is (3) moral training – sorely lacking – but necessary in that we are left to wander along with no instruction as to which of the desires, wants and needs produced in us are good or bad, controllable or not, useful or harmful, conducive to health or vice versa. And there is (4) higher mental training, or training in Self-Awareness – why do we inhabit this body? What is our purpose in doing so? What is the meaning of our lives? Is there anything else besides the physical world? What is this physical world we supposedly see? Is it outside us? Or is it only a perception of our own minds? Etc. etc. Unless the virtue of Perseverance and Steadfastness is accepted and welcomed, there can be no answers. And therefore the physical realm wins out… and we lose – eventually losing our lives and not knowing why, getting sick or diseased or weak and complaining and whining and finally leaving this world in a state of total childishness, Shakespeare’s second childhood.

So there is no option but to apply Perseverance, understand our limitations (too little prior education of mind) and work from there. Don't chop and change. Make a PLAN and KEEP ON PLUGGIN’.