Holocron: 04 - The Cost In Doing The Right Thing!
“You’re in a park having lunch and you notice a small child wandering around aimlessly, confused and upset. You watch to see if a parent or guardian approaches the child and after several minutes you realize there is no parent or guardian. Concerned you get up from where your parked or sitting and approach the child. You ask he or she in your warmest and most compassionate voice, “are you alright sweet heart?” The child looks up at you with a red face full of tears and anguish, doesn’t seem to be able to speak out of fear. You ask, “where is your mom and dad?” You look around to see if anyone notices you speaking to what might be their child or family member and again…nothing. You ask some people that are jogging and walking in the park if the child looks familiar. You get a negative from everyone you ask so then you extend your hand to the child offer he or she take it so you can walk them around a bit to the parked cars. (OBVIOUSLY YOU WOULD ASK FOR PROOF THE CHILD IS THEIRS SHOULD SOMEONE TRY AND CLAIM HE OR SHE!) Again, nothing…nervous and concerned for this child you bend down to meet his or her eyes and say, “baby…I’m going to call a Police Officer, will you sit with me and have some lunch while we wait?” Again the child says nothing but you can tell by the child’s body language he or she will go with you. You return to where you were sitting and you offer your lunch to the child which he or she eats which might indicate that the child hasn’t eating some time.”
The officer arrives and takes a statement and when the officer tries to take the child, he or she begins to cry. You offer the child to go with the officer and the child beings to relax. You sit and stay with the child for the rest of the day while the officer researches the child’s identity and attempts to track down the child’s parents. Lets give this a good, happy ending thats not too descriptive shall we? Lets say the officer tracks down the parents and there is some elaborate but plausible reasoning why their young child was found wondering by his or herself in a public park for hours with no food or water to be discovered by a perfect stranger that happened to be a moral and sound measurement of character.”
Here, you did right! You didn’t think about it; you didn’t weigh options or outcomes…pro’s and con’s, your love and compassion took over and you did what was moral and right! You sacrificed your lunch-time, your moment of personal relaxation and the rest of your day for a lost and scared child and because of this, you were able to reunite the child with his or her parents without further issue or even tragedy.
In our lives, doing the right thing is not always so easy. Doing the right thing might mean there will be a great cost to you and yours or others. Reputations; social standings, wealth and status, institutional paradigms that have been handed down and accepted for century’s are all at the mercy of the outcome assigned to one “doing the right thing”.
POPES, KINGS/QUEENS & PRESIDENTS HAVE BEEN CONFLICTED AND HAVE CHOSEN UNWISELY WHEN WEIGHING THE COST OF DOING THE RIGHT THING!
The situation of the child was an easy one for a principled, ethical and most moral person of character to prosecute. There was only you and the child. There was very little cost to your personal currency you had to consider in helping this child. You a grown adult that can take care of yourself if you were to become lost and this child who can not take care of his or herself if remained lost. Simple math here with few variables; however as our lives become more complex, the arithmetic in our lives becomes more complex. Doing what is right my have costs considered and not considered.
Is it so easy of a question to ask it in one word - WHY?
Why when a culture thousands of miles away accepts (and I say accept because though it does on and the government my condemn it…its still going on) the systematic rape and torture of her women by her militia’s and military goes virtually not addressed and recognized for the horror that it is? Why is doing the right thing here not so easy? To rape and or accept the rape of a woman is to rape your mother; your sisters, your daughters and every other woman you know. Rape; humiliate and torture a woman is to destroy another human beings spirit, mind and body and for what?
Control? Sex? Hatred? Other?
The world knows the horrors being done in other countries and knows just what the right thing to do is but…can’t and won’t in many cases act for many, many reasons.
Here in America there are woman and children that are going hungry. Women like your girlfriend, wife or mother. Children like you nephew and nieces, sons and daughters that are at this moment being victimized and brutalized in the most inconceivable and horrid ways unimaginable! Yet we know this…as a culture but we do very little when as a collective we can do MUCH!
Why is this?
“Things are not so cut and dry, not so easy. Considerations need to be weighed, options assessed.”
At the cost of another human beings humanity?
When clergy find themselves weighing the cost in doing the right thing for the institution of faith their members represent because they’ve horribly violated the sanctity of trust of their flocks and obligations to their Deity. The best they can come up with is a multi-million dollar emotional band-aid to easy a life time of suffering and turmoil for those violated and for those that love them?
When a CEO and CFO of a corporation trusted to manage your money for retirement cooks its books and plans to blow out the company to prevent the discovery of fraud and both profit from this action in excess of their corporate parachute which guarantees an unreasonable personal financial settlement…gets away with it by way of a GOVERNMENTAL BAIL OUT!
What was the math Congress used to weigh the cost to profit benefit in doing the right thing I wonder?
You are Jedi - Doing the right thing comes first without comment, question or debate! You must do what must be done and there will be times in which the ends may seem to out-weigh means just a tad then that will be another element to reconcile because to a Jedi, there is no such thing as good to evil cost benefit approach! There are times when action and or words may not be the proper choice but never both at the same time. There is always something we can do! There is always a choice to be made and inaction is not one of them!
I think it was Thomas Jefferson that said: “If I must chose between peace and righteousness, then I chose righteousness!”
Me?
I remember a summer day years ago while during my lunch break I spotted a child in a park alone and terrified. I seldom to never lose sleep over the choices I make when doing the right thing!