This year, I will reflect on the four cardinal virtues through daily practice and meditation, intentionally focusing on one per season. After starting the year with prudence, temperance, and justice – I now reflect on fortitude, or the deliberate exercise of strength and courage in the face of evil. 

Over the week, I reflected on structural build up and the ways that I deal with it.

I have a lot to do, structurally. Commitments add up, and start interfering with each other in my head. So, to start the week, I decided to make space. On Sunday, after visiting Hokusai at the State Gallery, I finished a small legacy project to copy the Dao de Jing by hand, as a way to better connect with Chinese thought and language. Then, I prepared for a full week ahead with anticipated training exercises and three sessions of Qi Gong, enjoying the beautiful spring weather.

Reading and physical exercise take incompressible time, but creative work, generating ideas, writing even, can be surprisingly fast, especially with a clear head! But then – getting a clear head can be the challenge.

The result of long-term neglect can manifest as a sudden change in a system, calling for immediate attention. There is a clog in my kitchen sink. It is likely to be the result of accumulated fat. Eight years of oil lining the pipes, slowly congealing and slowing flow, suddenly formed a block, which I must now attend to. This is, and isn’t, a new problem – the symptoms are, but the cause has built up over a long time. The same holds of our lives and bodies.

Fortitude meets hope and faith in the capacity to pace our action. I often get overwhelmed at the beginning of a cycle: there is so much on my plate, and I wonder how I could ever get through the lot. It is, in part, a default of projection. I imagine myself completing all tasks in the early days – and as much as I can, do, sometimes at the cost of serious strain. Then, halfway through the cycle, I find myself in a lull, and start nursing my tiredness. Eventually, unexpected last minute changes come up, requiring attention. Things happen in sequence. Some come first, others second. Fortitude is the courage to do things, and patiently continue doing them – but fortitude is also the courage to delay some, because others have to take priority.

What is the best way to pace oneself, though? Is it, as I did at the beginning of the week, to clear space by packing in recurring commitments, and leave room for focused attention later? Or is it, quite on the opposite, the deliberate preservation of empty times for rest and nurture, so that, when the time of action arrives, we can address challenges with a rested head? Trust, here, plays in – that others can take over and watch while we rest, and that, when the time for action does arrive, we will be ready to face it, and effectively deal with the challenge ahead.

Over the season, I will systematically train mind and body. For this, I will do a daily set of 6 physical exercises, with particular focus on core muscles, adding 1 rep/day for each, execute a daily qi-gong routine based on the 5 elements, adding 1 rep/element every week, and practice meditation, adding 1 session of 30’ every week. 

Exercise tally

Push-ups: 273

Sit-ups: 273

Squats: 273

Dog-cows: 273

Bird-dogs: 273

Back twists: 273

Qi-gong – 5-elements: 5 x 8 reps for each element

Meditation: 8 sessions