Joan Ball is a business professor at St. John’s University in New York and the author of Flirting with Faith: My Spiritual Journey from Atheism to a Faith-Filled Life.
At the risk of living up to our “popcorn” reputation, here’s a truly trivial confession: There are days when I walk right past stuff I simply don’t wish to see.
Like the cat puke I don’t want to clean.
We’ve got two little mongrels (one a lot less little than the other) and sometimes, well, they like to leave us “presents.”
And sometimes, when I hear that familiar, unmistakable huah-huah-huah sound in the middle of the night, while my husband snores peacefully at my side, I think to myself, “I could just as easily claim I was sleeping too.” Worse yet, in the morning when I pass the fetid pile, there are occasions when I put on my blinders and pretend I didn’t notice. “How long can I get away with this?” I wonder as I slink past the puke.
A better question might be, “How old am I in this moment?“
Consideration. Not my favorite virtue. But one I’m striving to cultivate nonetheless. As my love for my husband and gratitude for my family deepens with maturity, I try to overcome my selfishness and innate laziness, and develop my atrophied moral center a bit more.
My husband is a far more considerate person by nature (or perhaps he just had spectacular parenting): he washes out the coffee pot for me in the morning, he resets the showerhead so it won’t blast me in the face… I could go on and on. His sense of fairness and responsibility are truly something to behold.
I, on the other hand, struggle not to be a grinch. But as I continue writing this blog, and find within myself a growing concern with being a mensch, it’s becoming increasingly important to me to put in the effort. What’s cleaning a little cat puke, after all, if it will save the man I love from being grossed out?
Maybe feline vomit is not the driving issue of our time, but I think these little considerations, like not stealing cabs out from under one another, or tipping our servers, add up to the composition of our moral whole. If we fall down on the small stuff, aren’t we more likely to let the bigger stuff slide down the line?
So, folks… Are there things you leave to other people that you ought to do yourself? Or are you simply sickened by my upchuck confession?
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posted August 28, 2009 at 12:58 pm
This last question, which I take as the central spirit of today’s blog, is to me one of paramount importance, for several reasons.
Firstly, I have met far too many self-proclaimed gurus who wouldn’t think twice about fudging on their taxes, something they clearly see as a minor offense in the moral (and not legal) sense, all the while excoriating the sins of a materialistic culture and bemoaning humanity’s collective lack of will in tackling the great moral “issues of our time”. These people give me indigestion in the worst way. They do so because they clearly see some line that I do not – some demarcation that denotes what behavior of theirs is worthy of worry, and what is not – they are making this decision for me without my consent. Which means, of course, that something possibly effecting (directly or indirectly) me will be included in this category, and I will have to deal with it. One person’s thoughtlessness is another person’s problem.
Secondly, I am often myself tempted to let many, if not all, of the “little” things slide. Leaving aside the pointed and purposeful ambiguity in the term “little” (see above), it occurs to me that I justify this by comforting myself that if the matter were truly important, my malformed moral compass would suddenly spring into action, and keep me hard on the straight and narrow. But it occurs to me as I get older that this compass is more like a muscle that must be exercised to work to any effect.
Lastly, related to the above, is another problem of definition. One of myself. If I want to define myself as an honest person, for example, do I get to do so just because I don’t lie about the ‘big’ things, whatever I may decide those are? Or is my honesty in direct proportion to the number of times I actually lie, for whatever reason (setting aside the related question of whether or not there are times when it is more considerate and even moral TO lie). I have to at least ask myself why I think fudging the moral line is appropriate in some circumstances – and I think it behooves me to have good reasons for it, rather than arbitrary ones that simply suit my ends in the moment. For everyone’s sake, mine included. For one thing, it also helps ME. If I don’t have a well thought out idea of this stuff, I may be mistaken in my artibrary moments about WHAT actually DOES suit my ends, in the long view. So even if I’m a totally selfish bastard…it may be that I should STILL think more carefully about the ramifications of all of my behaviors.