As adults we can also cultivate the practice of choosing right. We can foster it in ourselves. The Christian Gospels have a series of passages that enjoin the reader to “keep awake.” Modern culture would prefer that we move through life half asleep. We are encouraged to make selections by default, not by conscious choice. So sometimes we do not actively opt to do wrong. But because we don’t actively choose to do what is right, we slip into wrongness. The practices of goodness are practices of vigilance and conscious choice. They are habits of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge supports the
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