As a basis for mentoring, there may be no better starting point than knowledge of the virtues. Any school or organization endeavoring to begin or strengthen a mentoring program should consider this. If, from early on, we develop in our students a vocabulary of the virtues, a concrete understanding of these all-important ways of living, then our ability to mentor them is enhanced tremendously. Through discussion of the virtues we can address the roots of student weaknesses in constructive ways. Instead of starting from a place where we point out our mentee’s vice—laziness, messiness, dishonesty, gluttony, etc.—we can elevate his sights by suggesting growth in a particular virtue. This only works when he, and hopefully his parents, share with his mentor a common understanding of the virtues. And whereas not all will recognize the Decalogue or the Beatitudes as a basis for mentoring by their own personal creeds, I think (and hope) that the classical virtues are more universally accepted. This shared acceptance is important when guiding a mentee toward growth.
In the climate in which our mentees live, the virtue of temperance especially demands that mentee and mentor be on the same page. When the world loudly and constantly tells us “Do whatever makes you feel good,” “Look out for Number 1,” “Do you, bro,” the flesh is more than willing to listen. In the face of this onslaught, it’s no wonder that temperance is one of the virtues that adolescent boys most noticeably struggle with.
What is Temperance?
Classically understood, temperance concerns a right order in the way we respond to our natural appetites for food, drink, and sex. These are obvious battlegrounds for adolescent boys, especially as they grow into autonomy and physical maturity in high school and college. Think of the stereotypical American boy between the ages of 16 and 22 and, if you’re not a practiced optimist, you might conjure up images of a pleasure-seeking, overly-indulged boy in a young man’s body, giving in to all of his sensual inclinations, with no real control over his appetites. This is what some would have us believe man is: an animal. St. Josemaría Escrivá observed the force of these attacks against true masculinity and urged us to fight back. “There is a need for a crusade of manliness and purity,” he said, “to counteract and undo the savage work of those who think man is a beast” (The Way, 121).
Temperance is not always about saying “No.” It is not a passive objection to or total and enduring abstinence from food or drink or sex. It is true that we are spiritual beings. Our souls are immortal, and we need to fight to keep them pure for eternity by pursuing spiritual goods. But our nature is also physical, and we were also made for physical goods. Temperance is not about puritanism. Temperance is about balance and order and about saying “Yes” to the proper things at the proper times. Looked at another way, Temperance is about self-control and about being the master of your passions and appetites. Without that mastery of self, a young man’s appetites can quickly become master of him.
With that in mind, I would argue that we need to expand the classical understanding of temperance to include consumption of media. From television to YouTube, smartphones to video games, and everything in between, we know the ubiquitousness of screen addiction among adolescent boys. The fight against it is a matter of temperance. Most of those things are not bad in and of themselves, but they need to be set within an order. Unfortunately, order and balance are typically not the words associated with the modern boy’s (or the modern man’s) media consumption, and the same screens that he’s addicted to for viral videos, first-person shooters, sports highlights, or social media, are also places where he is sold ideas of hedonism regarding food, drink, and sex.
Teaching Temperance
Helping a boy to grow in temperance is much the same as working on any virtue. First we need to inspire the boy to virtue, to help him see the good and to desire it for himself. Then we need to help him set achievable challenges that will increase incrementally over time. In this way we help our mentee set a goal and then create a plan with him for achieving it.
To inspire a boy in temperance we can take a few different approaches, and each includes a championing of delayed gratification. Fulton Sheen, in the Preface to his Life of Christ, stated that “There are only two philosophies of life: one is first the feast, then the headache; the other is first the fast and then the feast. Deferred joys purchased by sacrifice are always sweetest and most enduring.” We can couple these powerful words with stories from our own experience, or questions about times when our mentees had to wait for something they wanted, and impress on them the need to shun instant gratification and intemperance.
Another powerful motivation for some teenagers can be the draw of the counter-cultural. For whatever reason, many adolescents like being different, “original,” or even rebellious. In a culture of hedonism, what could be more counter-cultural than temperance? Teens also don’t like being controlled, told what to do, or manipulated. Pointing out to them the ways that they give over control of their lives through intemperance can be eye-opening. In these ways you can actually help a mentee to consider it cool to fast, to abstain, to have a dumb phone, to live temperately, especially if you live those ways yourself.
The manliness of self-mastery can also be a great motivator. Once again, either we take control of our passions, or they will control us. No man wants to be enslaved to anyone or anything. And if their imaginations have been formed by good stories and great heroes, they also desire to make the kinds of sacrifices that Archbishop Sheen mentioned. It’s important for us to point out to our boys the manliness, the real toughness, in self-mastery and sacrifice. The struggle for temperance provides for all of us a daily training ground where, if we can succeed in making small sacrifices and rise from all of our falls, we will be ready when we are called to lay down something more than just screens or sweets.
And in the midst of all of this sacrifice and delaying of gratification and fasting, it is critical that we remember that temperance is not a strict and enduring “No.” It is the ability to emphatically say “Yes!” in the proper context. This is why we need to teach our boys what it means to truly feast. Feasting reminds us that the things of the world are good when we use them appropriately and that they are gifts for us. Far from being a release from “the bonds of temperance,” true feasting is the fruit of temperance, a sweet and enduring joy “purchased by sacrifice.” And when we feast well, with good food and drink, good friends, good music, good fun, with dancing and games, with thankfulness for the feast as a gift, when we shun the selfishness and self-centeredness of many modern so-called “festivals,” we feel the fullness of the life that we are called to. That fullness is the fruit of temperance and virtue.
If the boy is inspired toward virtue, the next and important step is to help him create a plan for living virtuously. In terms of temperance we need to consider that he might be pretty deeply entrenched in habits of intemperance. Breaking these habits will require a firm resolve, a day-by-day approach, and the optimistic mentality to begin again after every fall. After our mentee has identified for himself his specific areas of intemperance—over-eating, compulsive snacking, TV, phone—we can help him set some short-term, incrementally increasing goals. Some ideas could include: don’t eat between meals; eat dessert only on feast days; turn off the phone for a day/weekend/week; watch TV only with your family; use screens only in public parts of the house. Checking in regularly with him on his progress, in a natural and not overbearing way, will help him keep the goal in mind and provide the opportunity to increase the challenge when he’s ready.
And the challenge is for mentors, too. If we wish to see our mentees grow in temperance, we should live the virtue ourselves. We can be powerful examples for them if we do so quietly and without bragging. We can unite our struggle to theirs by offering our difficulties and our struggle for them, that they will progress in overcoming their intemperance. The complete quote from St. Josemaría in The Way is actually a direct commission to us as men, and doubly so as mentors who are tasked with guiding the next generation of men: “There is a need for a crusade of manliness and purity, to counteract and undo the savage work of those who think man is a beast. This crusade is yours.”