An Ethical Decision

As l sat down to lunch with my friend, she started the conversation by saying “I have an ethical dilemma and I need your advice!” That set me back on my heels! ME give HER advice on an ethical dilemma!! After she had told me her story and I had responded, she said, ‘You were the best person I could think of to help me with this.’ While I have always considered myself a fairly ethical person, where in the world had this come come from?

It must have come as a result of all the conversations over lunches, the text messages, the phone calls, the emails, the recommending (or not) of TV shows, the lending of books, all the trivia of our relationship. It did not come from a long and intense discussion of ethics. In fact I can't recall that word ever being uttered during any of those times. To say that this was a sobering experience is putting it mildly! Then I came across this quote by Dorothy Day, an American journalist, social activist, and Catholic convert.‘A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. And each one of our thoughts, words, and deeds is like that.’

It was, in fact, a sobering reminder that nothing we say or do, is in a vacuum. Once we utter those words, they become part of someone else’s life And that at some future date they may come back to haunt us. We may wish we had never said or done it, but never can we erased the actual event. I’m not sure about the ‘thoughts’ in Day’s quote above that she says also cause ripples that spread in all directions. Except that thoughts/feelings are what generate our words and deeds. So in a very real way, what we do and what we say, not only affects how others perceive us, but can also reveals to them the truth about who we really are.

Some politicians come to mind from both Canada and the United States. Politicians who, by what they have both done and said, told the world who they really are and what their values actually are. Whenever I hear someone say about another person, “They didn’t really mean that”, I wonder why they think that. Why do they think that someone would say something that wasn’t authentic? Or are they simply assuming that because what was said doesn’t agree with what THEY think, it must be wrong.

I was fortunate in the story I started with, that what came back to haunt me this time was positive. That might well might not be the case the next time!

As the bible says in the 15th verse of Obadiah, ’As you have done, it shall be done to you; your deeds shall return on your own head.’

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