Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.
Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.
What would you be willing to do, if no one were ever the wiser?
The measure of a person’s conscience is directly proportional to anything they might be willing to do, if they knew they could not get caught.
Have you ever had to make a moral decision in which it was going to outweigh something that was financially substantially to your advantage?
Which way did you ultimately decide? Did you take the financial gain or did you act morally responsibly and let it pass?
It is simple, when a decision is black and white. Start with the question, would you do something that is morally wrong? In order to even answer that question, you would have to break that down by saying, “define morally.” Given that a majority of people would agree on a majority of moral topics, we might presume there could be a meeting of the minds. Yet, the reality is, in the subset of categories, in which we do not all agree about what is morally acceptable, lies the quagmire of this emotional quandary.
Now, let’s add a situation in which you stand to make a lot of money. If in your heart, you know something is not fair to everyone, or is environmentally problematic, or is socially questionable, you are already venturing into gray territory, with regard to the definition of morality.
Now, if you are right at the point of signing your name, and recognizing the massive financial windfall that we have been talking about, will you be willing to sign your name to something that violates some aspect of morality that you would hope another person would not violate?
Make this even more complicated by adding the variable that not one other person, not even your loved ones, nor your friends, will ever know that you made this decision. Will you be willing to violate your own moral code of ethics in order to recognize this massive gain?
Life gives us continuous opportunities to define whom we are, what is important to us, where we stand on specific issues, and how we would like to model behavior, so that others around us recognize the true being with whom they are dealing.
The other side of this equation comes with karma. Some people believe in karma and others do not. I have watched karma in my life and other’s lives, for so long, it is no longer a question in my mind, but a certainty.
I have tried most of my life to empower karma to help me make these kinds of decisions, even in the darkest hour of night. When we are clear about whom we are, and how we wish to conduct ourselves, we awaken to who we are, and what we are, and then everyone automatically awakens to who, and what we are, without a single word spoken.
Understanding this most rudimentary and critical variable in life, could not be a more important cornerstone in the human dynamic.
To put it plainly, if you are not walking the talk, you are just a puppet. Be the puppeteer.
Happy Monday!
https://brianweiner.com
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