Prudence: The Way-Finding Virtue
Living intentionally means matching the right means with the right ends.
Most people who enter Chartres Cathedral look up—at the glowing stained glass windows, the vaulted ceilings, and the spectacular rose windows. But if you look down, you would notice a surprising pattern on the floor of the cathedral:
It’s a labyrinth, a kind of maze with paths large enough for a person to walk through. Pilgrims who would make their way to the cathedral, walking on foot for days or weeks would see this as a reflection of their journey. Unlike a maze, though, the labyrinth has no dead ends, only one path. At moments it seems you are near the center, only to be pushed back to the edge again. As in life, the only way through is forward, though the path has surprising turns.
The history of the labyrinth goes back at least to Greek mythology. The architect Daedalus supposedly built a maze to contain the minotaur, half-man and half-bull, on the island of Crete. The Athenians sent tribute to Crete in the form of young men and women to be sacrificed to the minotaur. The hero Theseus eventually killed the minotaur and escaped with the help of Ariadne’s thread, unwinding the thread on his way in and following it back on his way out.
The symbol of the labyrinth also came to feature in medieval architecture. According to the website of Chartres Cathedral, “the labyrinth was initially created for the liturgy of Easter Vespers [the Vigil]—a celebration of the Church remembering the victory of Christ over death.”1 Interestingly, the labyrinth has a cruciform design: look for the “arms” branching off near the entrance, pointing right and left. And apparently, if you superimpose the west facade over the labyrinth, the center of the rose window, Christ in glory, matches the central “petal” of the stone maze. The labyrinth thus symbolically represents life as a path from suffering to rebirth, ending in the glory of light and splendor.2
Against the background of Greek myth, Christ appears as the true Theseus who slays the minotaur, the monster of death, after entering the labyrinth of life. It is also a metaphor for our lives, regardless of our affiliations or beliefs. While our biological life trends toward death, in another sense, we must all take perilous paths that lead from small deaths into deeper life, starting on the surface of life, entering deeper into reality, and re-surfacing with a greater sense of perspective.
Life as a Pilgrimage
Life is not static. Most people I have talked, no matter their stage of life, are on a journey, thinking about where to go next and what to do. Should I join the high school band or try out for basketball? Should I attend this college or that one? Should I take this job or another? Should I marry the person I’m now dating? Where should we live? What elementary school should we send our children to? And, in our retirement, where should we live and what should we do?
Not all of these questions may be on the table for you, but usually some question is in the back of our mind, or, more likely, front of our mind, as we move through daily living. The seasons of life present us with paths we have not yet walked, decisions we have not yet made, questions we have still not answered. What is the best way to make our way through this labyrinth, from death into deeper life?
Success Addiction: The Minotaur in the Maze
The minotaur in our life, as we journey through the labyrinth, is probably not an actual monster. It might be the little but persistent distractions that keep us from living life more fully and intentionally. It could be an addiction to success, something that might even look like a virtue, but is really a glittering vice.
As Arthur Brooks shares in an interview on Harvard Business Review:
The problem is that when you’re a workaholic, people congratulate you. Nobody says, “Man, you are so good at drinking gin.” Nobody ever says, “Dude, you’re unbelievable at how much methamphetamine you can consume.” These are not compliments. People feel sorry for you when you’re addicted to other substances or gambling or pornography or anything else that’s deleterious, dangerous, and addictive, that captures your brain.
But workaholism, man, you work all night, you work 100-hour weeks, people are like, “Dude, you’re killing it.” And you’re like, “Yeah, I feel so good about myself, but how come I can’t maintain a proper relationship?”
I imagine most of us have felt this pull at times. We want to be “special” more than we want to be happy. But happiness is sometimes a lot simpler than it seems. What can we do to avoid losing ourselves in the labyrinth of life?
Practical Wisdom: The Way-Finding Virtue
As I’ve written elsewhere on finding your one thing, we need to think about the purpose of our life if we are to live it well. This does not mean we have to map out every step of the way, in all its detail. But it would be helpful to know what things are most important to you, the things that will bring genuine happiness.
In the ancient world, Aristotle and Plato called this virtue phronesis. The Latin translation, as one finds it in medieval thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, is prudentia. This gets translated into the rather stuffy English word prudence. But one might also translate it as practical wisdom: the way-finding virtue for life. Practical wisdom or prudence is the virtue, the human excellence, by which we are able to match our desired ends with the suitable means to achieve those ends.
To put it another way, practical wisdom helps us walk the labyrinth of life. It is the excellence that reminds us of our ultimate purpose and helps us find the path to get there. I would suggest that the ultimate desire is for happiness, though it will always be imperfect in this life. In that sense, the goal is to be happier.
But we can get easily sidetracked in this pursuit. We might mistake success, money, pleasure, control, or fame as the paths to happiness. How can we get clear about the end and the means to get there, exercising the virtue of prudence?
An Exercise in Practical Wisdom
The next step is to figure out how we can map these means and ends onto one another. James Clear has written persuasively about identity-based habits. Instead of planning to gain 25 pounds of muscle in twelve months, think: my goal is to be someone who exercises. Instead of planning to write a book in six weeks, think: my goal is to be a writer. Instead of planning to wake up every morning at 5am, think: my goal is to be a morning person. The identity can then move you, through tiny habits, through the process that will get you to the goal.
I would put a further spin on this. What are the most important “identities” in your life? To put it another way, what sort of a person do you want to become? This is especially helpful to think about in terms of a whole life. At the end of your life, what would be most important to you? That you build a Fortune 500 company? That you travel to every country in the world? That you maintain a close group of friends who knew you deeply? That you build a lasting marriage that you shared with the world through your children and shared mission?
Make a list of the top five things you want in life. Whether you have a few more weeks to live or a few decades, this question remains relevant. You can start with a long list, maybe 25 items. Rank these items from most to least important to see what makes it into the top five. Here are a few things that might make the cut: meaningful relationships with family and friends, engaging and creative work that serves others, the practice of a faith or self-transcendent philosophy, and good health to enjoy those things. Most of these top goals, interestingly enough, tell us about the person we want to become: a good spouse and parent, a good friend, a master of a craft, etc.
Identify habits that will move you toward the identity. That is, translate those identities (the goals) into habits (the means). After zooming out on your whole life, zoom in on today. To live a healthier life today, I could take a short walk outside. To become a better husband today, I could get my wife a cup of coffee every morning. To live my faith more deeply, I could take two minutes for prayer or meditation. To gain mastery in my field of work, I could arrange interviews with people ahead of me in the same area.
Create an implementation intention for those habits. An implementation intention converts habits into pathways for action. They state what you will do and when, where, and for how long. For example, if my goal is to get healthier, I could write out: “Every morning when I wake up at 7am, I will get out of bed and do 10 pushups in my bedroom.” Many studies demonstrate that implementation intentions increase our success in changing habits.
In summary: ask yourself who you want to become at the end of your life, identify the daily habits that can get you there, then design an implementation protocol for how you will live out those habits. So: identity—habit—implementation.
Here’s an example of what this process might look like. Say you want to have a happy and lifelong marriage. What little thing can you do today that would move you along that path? It might bea daily ritual of “checking in” with your spouse. The habit is going to change from person to person. (Tip: You probably need to ask your spouse what he or she thinks would help the relationship.) Then make an implementation protocol: When I come home from work, I will kiss my wife and sit down to ask how she is doing. So simple. But over time, very powerful.
Living with Practical Wisdom: A Daily Task
Practical wisdom is not a one-and-done kind of thing. It is a skill that we can practice daily. Since our daily circumstances are constantly changing, we need the flexibility to make plans as changes arise. But at its core, prudence is the skill or virtue that allows us to our desired ends with suitable means. The more we practice that, day to day, in the little actions of each day, the better we will become at aligning our actions with what is most important to us in life.
See also this brief explanation, in French, on the use of the labyrinth during the Easter Vigil. The historical documents that witness to this and similar phenomenons include Ordinatio de Pila Facienda: Auxerre 1396, Ordo veridicus: Chartres v. 1360, Rationale Divinorum Officiorum: Jean Beleth v. 1155.
One can find labyrinth walks at other cathedrals, too, as at Amiens Cathedral. Labyrinth structures also appear in ancient Egyptian temple complexes, Hindu mandalas, Celtic knot designs, and even the Old Summer Palace in Beijing.