For some of us, ironically, LSU football may command more of our lives than it should—not something to abandon entirely, but something to return to its proper place. I have been working on that balance for many years, alternating some successes with some abysmal failures.

In a great understatement, LSU hired Lane Kiffin because of what he knows how to add to a football program—points, victories, talent, and energy. Yet the more consequential development in his life may be what he has learned to subtract. When Kiffin spoke about personal growth at SEC Media Days, he didn’t begin with everything he had acquired during five decades here on Earth. He talked about what he had removed.

“One of the things that has been great is subtracting things as you get older,” Kiffin said.

Certainly, the cynic would say, it’s easy to subtract things on the heels of adding millions upon millions to your bank account. I get that, I would largely agree with that, but my purpose today is to cull the virtue in the message for me, for readers. We are not making Lane Kiffin a saint just yet.

We are simply using the virtue of subtraction as an anchor point today.

Among those subtractions, Kiffin named alcohol, toxic relationships, and foods that were hurting him. He has also removed social media from his phone, a decision he credits with making him more present and less inclined to compare his life with everyone else’s, not to mention more able to help fellow coaches and players disconnect in a similar way.

Although most people understand that certain habits can become destructive, addition by subtraction remains one of the more difficult forms of progress to actually put into practice. We ordinarily measure improvement by what has been added—more money, greater responsibility, the applause from the crowd, another achievement, or something new to possess. Removing something can almost feel like a regression of sorts, especially when it once supplied pleasure, attention, or comfort, especially if there is a sense of emptiness inside when we do it.

The Gospel and common sense both tell us that life can become so crowded that the incessant piling on of things begins working against the self.

Alcohol is not evil in itself, and neither are social media, good food, or relationships that have simply reached their natural end. Yet any legitimate thing can acquire an illegitimate degree of authority over us, until we deteriorate into defending the very thing that has us trapped.

Kiffin has spoken candidly about what alcohol did to him. It damaged his marriage, affected his judgment, and left him continually repairing problems he had created. Many of us have been guilty of at least some version of this, but fewer have had the humility to admit it. Having stopped drinking in January 2021, Kiffin has now remained sober for more than five years. We are not speaking to every question about his character here, but five years off the bottle is long enough to indicate something more serious than a temporary resolution, to suggest that we are not dealing with a simple man here devoid of any virtue, as he is so often portrayed.

In Scripture, Christ describes growth through pruning. Even a branch already producing fruit is cut back so that it can bear more. I can attest to this with my love for gardening. No one would think that such pruning is “punishment” or “something bad.” The removal is simply an acknowledgment that continued growth sometimes requires cutting away accumulations that have begun to consume what needs to be directed elsewhere now. The metaphor is easy to understand.

Kiffin did not present his choices in those terms, of course, and there is no reason to force religious language into his mouth to say something untrue about him. And whether those changes endure will be demonstrated over time, but that is not the point for us here and is, in fact, none of our business. Virtue is not established by one reflective press conference. Kiffin probably understands that better than most after living so much of his adult life in front of an antagonistic public. It is something we should understand as well—about both Kiffin and ourselves.

Whatever the shelf life of Kiffin’s changes may be, the principle remains useful for me and you, good reader. At some point, growth stops being a question of what else we can stack. It becomes a question of what no longer deserves our attention, and whether we are willing to cut away the branches of life that once enveloped us.