Our fourth virtue is temperance, which is often described as self-control.  Aristotle called temperance the character of a person whose appetites are in harmony with his reason. 

Now, if you study American history, you’ll read about the temperance movement, which was concerned only with alcoholic beverages—like beer, wine, and liquor—because of how the excessive drinking of alcohol made people lose their self-control.

But, as C.S. Lewis makes clear, in its original understanding, the virtue of “[t]emperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining [from them completely], but going the right length and no further… [a] man who makes his golf or his motor-bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as ‘intemperate’ as someone who gets drunk every evening…”

And Proverbs 25:28 says that “[a] man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.”  That is, without self-control, we will be unable to resist whatever desire enters us, and it eventually can take us over like an invading army.

I wonder: When you started this year, how were the walls of your city?  Were you used to doing mostly whatever you wanted whenever you wanted to—and has it been difficult sometimes to adjust to a school where self-control is expected of you?  If so, just remember: Every little act of self-control is another brick in the wall of your city.  And I can tell you, you’ve done a tremendous job this year—so keep building.

Have a wonderful day.