Imagine the following scenario for a moment:
You invited all your friends to be the test audience for your new theater show “the 24 hour monologue”.
This show means a lot to you, so you informed them it’s important to you that they sit through the whole thing.
The feedback you need most from your best friends is how each of the 24 hours of the monologue worked together, if the cross-references and callbacks worked, etc. You’ve put your heart and soul in this project. Now all you need is 24 hours of their attention.
Much to your dismay, with each passing hour of the day, more of your friends decide to bail on you and break their promise (“Those first 12 hours were enough of a sacrifice already”).
Except for Andy.
Turns out, Andy is your only real friend. The kind of friend you can count on for something like this.
While by the 13th hour of your monologue, everyone else has left, Andy keeps sitting there.
In fact, he keeps sitting there until the full 24 hours are done.
Because Andy is a paraplegic.
He couldn’t stand up and walk away even if he wanted to.
The facts are clearly observable though:
Everybody left, Andy stayed.
Does that make Andy a better friend than all the others?
Of course not, it makes Andy your hostage.
This may sound strange, but we run into situations like this all the time. And it’s common to confuse the handicap for the virtue.
Because if you purely look at the facts of a person’s behavior (whether your own or someone else’s), they’re often indistinguishable.
But they are, of course, energetically different things.
Would Andy have stayed if his legs properly functioned? There is no way to know. But the story that he stayed because he cared is more pleasant for both of you.
The cleanest place to observe this “virtue vs. handicap” confusion is to look within yourself.
For example:
Kindness is a beautiful virtue.
But many people who are perceived as kind, simply do not feel able to be unkind.
In those cases, the kindness isn’t virtuous behavior, it’s handicapped behavior.
Kindness as a virtue is expressed when the person knows they could easily be unkind, but chooses to be kind instead.
Now, kindness as a result of a handicap isn’t worse . It’s still kindness.
But the distinction matters, because fundamentally, you are dealing with a different structure.
An easy way to illustrate the difference between them is cheating.
Many people think they would never cheat on their partner.
Virtuous.
But if you ask the question: “How often are you presented with a situation in which you are extremely attracted to someone other than your partner, know they wouldn’t reject you, and know that you could 100% get away with it?”, the answer is usually zero.
This means you can’t know if it’s a virtue or a handicap.
Sure, you can counter with “I simply don’t feel attracted to anyone but my partner”, but it’s still the same thing. How do you know you would not, ever? How would you behave if you do?
Until this is an actual thing that happens, a situation in which you get to choose “I shall not cheat” , then your virtue is indistinguishable from a handicap.
Which means the moment the handicap gets removed, you may be shocked by what you do.
In other words: It’s important to know the difference between which of your traits are virtues and which ones are handicaps, lest you suddenly find yourself ruining your marriage simply because of mistaking your own handicap for a virtue until you arrive in Vegas or something.
I imagine quite a few passion crimes to happen this way. Someone believing they are non-violent, when really, they were never presented with a situation that made them want to be violent and offered an opportunity to get away with it.
Some years back, I wrote about how your core values are revealed only when you are faced with a high stakes choice between them, everything else is just imagination.
You can say you wouldn’t sacrifice your integrity for money. But if you haven’t been offered a large sum in exchange for it, then for all intents and purposes, this may just be a handicap.
The problem with confusing them is misplaced trust (in ourselves or someone else).
If a handicap is external (e.g. lack of opportunities), it’s best to remain agnostic and simply say “we don’t know”.
“We don’t know if I could cheat on someone”, “we don’t know if I could ever be violent”, “we don’t know if I’m a harder worker or if I just lack the ability to relax”.
If a handicap is internal (e.g. you’re friendly because of your inability to be unfriendly, or you’re calm because you lack energy), then you might want to experiment with “putting the option back on the table” :
Find ways to exploriment with the opposite option, preferably in a way that doesn’t cause too much negative impact.
For example, if you think you are peaceful but find out that is just a handicap, you could learn martial arts and join a debate club.
Then you can go out in the world, having transformed your handicap into a virtue, (by practicing its opposite until it became a choice), knowing you can rely on yourself with this trait.