“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better person.”
Recently, I’ve been digging into the book “To Shake the Sleeping Self” by Jedidiah Jenkins. It’s a memoir about his bicycle trip from Oregon to Patagonia, which he did when he turned 30 (and I felt good about packing up a pickup truck and leaving Western Pennsylvania for Boston when I hit that milestone).
In one of the chapters, at the start of the new year, he references the above quote by Ben Franklin and I was struck by the first part of the quote – to be at war with your vices. The definition of war is conflict and every day I have conversations with people who are trying.
Sometimes folks have a case of the screw its – where they find themselves actively eating the cookies for a snack when the yogurt is in the fridge, or skipping their workout to watch Netflix.
Sometimes I talk with people who just don’t have the space, emotionally, mentally, or logistically, to make their health and nutrition goals their number one priority. Recently, I read about the idea that there is no such thing as a disciplined life – there are only sprints of discipline that we do until those disciplines become habits.
Last week I was home in Pennsylvania. Despite the warm feelings of home, there are plenty of triggers for me there, and I often struggle to stay connected to the lifestyle I’ve created for myself now. I have plenty of struggles with my vices – with the habits and behaviors that got me through some of the harder times I had when I was younger.
And it’s hard. It’s hard to feel like, despite all of my hard work and personal growth that I could so easily fall back into some of those bad habits. But when I came back to Maine, I dusted myself off and went back to work, on meditation, on exercise, on nutrition.
When I read the Franklin quote, I was struck by the acknowledgement that when it comes to many of the behaviors that we are working on, it’s a process – and though I know you’ve heard it a thousand times, it’s a process with no arrival. We do things we regret and feel shame for and about – or we don’t do things and we feel the same way.
All we can do is return to the process. Every person I talk to is working hard – if they weren’t they wouldn’t be talking to me. They wouldn’t be at the gym. They wouldn’t be trying.
So yes, be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every day, every week, every year, find you a better person.