This is theme I’d like to return to from a few different angles: the classical notion that ethics come before economics come before politics.

Think about that: first we have to govern ourselves (ethics); then we have to govern our households, meaning our material needs and wants (economics); and then we have to govern ourselves as social animals (politics).

From Aristotle, we have the idea that he who would rule must first have been ruled — people who haven’t learned ethics and self-control don’t make very good stewards of other people’s lives or livelihoods.

And isn’t that what we so often today in ourselves, in our economics, and in our politics — people who are so ill-governed in themselves that they make a mess for everyone else when given a chance?

Such lack of control — i.e., of ethics — has historically not been a sustainable path to the good life. Complete licentiousness might be enjoyable in the short run but tends to exact its toll in the long.

And, of course, when ungoverned people are given (or take) a chance to govern something big and important to all of us, like a company or a government, what will happen to all of us as a result of the license they take?

From my first days in grad school, I’ve looked up to and personally befriended many of the mid-career military fellows that join us each year.

These are about a half-dozen officers from across the different services, each with about 20 years of service in uniform and most of them just coming out of command, which is the real proving ground for officers at that level. These are, in a word, serious folks (though I’ve always been impressed by how fun-loving they tend to be, too).

Here’s the thing: civilian control of the military (one of the hidden-in-plain-sight guardrails of our democracy) means that people like me generate the policies that determine where people like them get sent around the world, and for what purposes. It’s not specific: 20-something civilians don’t directly boss 20-year officers around. Ever. But 20- and 30-something wonks with degrees like mine do a lot of the grunt work that shapes policy papers that shape high-level decisions that shape my friends’ lives and fortunes.

Living and studying in such proximity with these people has really brought home for me the idea that policy is ultimately personal: policymakers’ work can have steep consequences for other people’s lives that aren’t anything like the abstraction of a national security strategy.

The political and economic ways in which policy is personal are topics for another time. What I’m trying to say here is that the friendships I’ve developed amidst and alongside my studies have continually pushed me to ask myself what I would do if I had to make a decision about some urgent and potentially risky policy matter.

For what would I risk lives in the abstract?

For what would I risk friends’ lives?

Some things are worth it. But knowing the people on the other end of the stick forces me to interrogate just which things those might be on any given day.

In response to a screaming headline emergency, it’s worth asking (and not for the first time):

What would I do?

What would I risk a friend to do?

It’s commonly said that ethics are what we do when no one’s watching.

That seems a good enough shorthand for now, though of course it’s important to act rightly when people are watching. (When that is, and who’s watching, is a topic I expect we’ll return to.)

Another way of thinking about this might be to say that ethics are what we do all the time. Which begs the question: when do we learn and practice them?

I’ll suggest two answers. First, we’re learning all the time. A mature ethical code should (and probably can only) be developed through repeated interactions with the real world. Second, the time to think deeply about ethics is precisely when no one’s watching — that is, the downtime between those moments when you’re expected to do the right thing, on the spot, in full view.

There’s no time to come up with a code that works in the moment, just like you can’t make up for all the weight training you didn’t do beforehand when you step onto the field to play the game.

Training always happens on your own time. Ethics, then, are the product of what you do when no one’s watching.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing in the past several days, and one of the themes that kept coming up was the roots of and relationship between ethics, economics, and politics.

Those are also subjects I’d like to return to in my own study, and to try to make sense of here.

And so, without further ado, ethics will be the theme of inquiry for this month. We’ll start with Aristotle and see where we go from there.

[After a fun month of exploring a poem a day, I’m returning to my own riffs — for now. Enjoy, and happy new year.]

There’s an ancient custom in Scotland called first-footing, in which someone steps outside a home before midnight to symbolically be first to cross the threshold in the new year, bearing the ritual good-luck gifts.

I first-footed my own house last evening (all the other housemates being away), and I don’t meet the ritual criteria for the first-footer (though I’m part Scottish, I look more like a Viking). Being ecumenical as to good-luck charms, though, I settled for some Texan new year soup (I’m not Texan at all, but Lisa Fain’s recipes always taste like home) and, for good measure, the “wee dram” of Scotch associated with the first-footing tradition.

Amidst this muddle of rituals, today is a strong reminder of a different kind of first-footing that has made an enormous difference in my life and which I’d like to continue to re-pay — and pay forward — throughout the year.

Today is the anniversary of one of my best friends, who, a little more than a year ago, took the initiative to invite me for drinks (and had the persistence to make it happen). Leaving the local watering hole, he took an even braver step: he looked me in the eyes and said, “Hey, man — we’re going to be friends.”

He meant it, and we have been. His decision to take the first step, and the deep friendship that has grown between us since, has brought amazing richness to my life this past year. Finding such a friend is one of the best kinds of luck there is.

And so, this new year, a happy anniversary to my friend, and a happy and healthy new year to all. And may we all be brave enough to take the step that brings good luck and friendship to those we meet and cherish.

From “Burning the Old Year,” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

***

2018 was something, wasn’t it?

(Remember when we all said we couldn’t wait to put 2016 to bed, then 2017? This is at least the third year in a row that everyone, in their own way, has carried like a millstone around the neck — and each heavier than the last.)

Who’s to say 2019 will be any better, or easier? Who’s to say those very ideas aren’t just pure fancy? Who’s to say the new year in fact marks anything new, other than maybe the calendar on the wall and the inevitable typos and erasures as we retrain our fingers to write this year’s date?

What would it even feel like to not wear the millstone for a necklace any more? That would surely be a shouting absence, wouldn’t it?

Of course it would. But the thing to remember is that the question isn’t when it will be removed, but rather when we might learn to lay it down or even take it off ourselves. Regardless of external circumstance — and it is still within our power to determine how much attention we pay to that — isn’t it just as true as ever that it’s the things left undone that leave us most unquiet?

And so, at the dying of the year, what better excuse to try something new, to (re)commit to a thing we’re determined to do?

A new year is as arbitrary (and as good) a starting line as any. And it’s upon us, like it or not.

You’re ready. Let’s go.

From “Kentucky River Junction,” by Wendell Berry

Our lives, half gone
stay full of laughter.

Free-hearted men
have the world for words.

Though we have been apart,
we have been together.

***

In the pause, the slightly-suspended animation between the holidays and the turning of the year, thoughts turn to friends near and far. Have we been too much apart, or together enough? What will the coming year bring?

A dear friend of mine prepared me for this. After high school, she said, you’ll pass into the world of adult friendships. You won’t see your friends every day, or even talk to them so often. And yet, with the ones that really count, you’ll keep in touch — then fall back together to pick up the conversation just where you left off, with all the words you’ve gleaned from the world in between.

And best of all — no matter what — stay full of laughter.

From “Sea Fever,” by John Masefield

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

***

For the first time in years, I actually asked for more books this Christmas, and have spent the past several days tearing through three of those I wished for.

First up (at long last!) were Steve Pressfield’s The War of Art and Turning Pro. I’ve been thinking about Steve’s work a lot lately, especially after listening to his recent guest appearance on Mark McGuinness’s podcast about the hero’s journey and the artist’s journey. The hero’s journey, of course, is the adventure or trial by which we come to know our true selves and return to society bearing a gift; the artist’s journey, in Steve’s telling, is the subsequent journey of giving the gift we’ve received back to the society that receives us.

Immediately afterward came the late Admiral Sandy Woodward’s One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander. That’s quite a yarn, and distinguished at least as much for its introspection and honest reckoning with the trials of war as for its descriptions of battle and command. Like the best memoirs, it chronicles Adm. Woodward’s hero’s journey and remains for the rest of us as a gift of his artist’s journey.

Reading these books back to back, several things seem clear:

• No adventure, no art.
• No reflection, discipline, and learning, no worthwhile art. (This is the essence of “turning pro,” as a writer, entrepreneur, naval officer, or whatever.)
• Not everyone gets to live as Odysseus, with a hero’s journey spanning decades, or even as Adm. Woodward, who prepared for decades to pass the test of a lifetime in a “mere” 100 days. For the rest of us, the adventure/art (hero/artist) cycle has to be repeated on a longer cycle: have an adventure, make meaning of it — and then “down to the seas again” to see what we might meet this time, what we might make of it, and what it might make of us.

Each voyage of any value will demand our utmost, yet we grow through the experience (plus reflection). And thus sooner or later must put to sea again and again to earn a quiet sleep when the long trick’s truly over.

From “God’s Grandeur,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

And for all this, nature is never spent;
   There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
   Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs

***

Rebirth — and the possibility of rebirth — is an idea buried at the core of our culture.

“There are no second acts in American lives,” said Fitzgerald, and you’d think we never heard. This time, this year, this resolution — this will be the one that makes us and all things new.

Perhaps so. Though, if we’re honest, we should pause to wonder why all the previous efforts did not work, yet this one will.

And yet. As long as we accept both that nature is never spent and that it is not to be frittered away foolishly, there’s room for freshness, hope, rebirth. Again. This time, for real.

“Epitaph on a Tyrant,” by W. H. Auden

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

***

With a new year approaching, it’s worth asking: just what are we accustomed to now?

• Yet another story full of the strange and childish grammar of a Twitter feed?
• Some more martial bluster that the last remaining self-proclaimed adults still proclaim “isn’t normal”?
• A Christmas headline that another child has died in custody of U.S. agents?

And it might also be worth asking:

• Is it really news (or newsworthy)? Are we still so eager to pay attention?
• How many times do we believe it’s possible to cast those dice without consequence?
• Are we unmoved even by the death of children at our hands?

And finally, we might have to ask: what, in these days, would it take to truly shock us?