Moral Compass Questions

Just thinking....

How is it that we develop the moral code that lies at the core of who we are? I look around and am continually amazed at much of the world that does not function with the kind of inner compass I feel so essential to my life. I wonder how I developed the certainty I have about right and wrong and justice. It's been a long time since I was a philosophy minor in college and thinking about such issues, but they continue to fascinate me even more with the enhanced vision of age. I look back on decisions made and obstacles overcome and wonder how I managed to figure out that doing the right thing brought its own inner reward. And I confess to being baffled by evil—especially those who, though greed, guile and inaction, cause such harm to others and truly feel no remorse, no twinges of conscience. No sense of responsibility. How can humans be so different from one another?

The Waking (Theodore Roetke)

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I do learn by going where I have to go. All my life, I've felt like I was simply putting one foot in front of the other, making logical choices. In reality I don't think it's that simple. I'm by nature a planner. I spent my earliest years always focused on my future and making decisions aimed at goals I could barely discern. As an adult, I found myself in a difficult transition, slowly learning to focus on the present and to enjoy the moments I was actually living, as I was living them. The path ahead was important but how one moved through the present mattered too. Many times the steps involved a careful tap, tap, tapping of a toe to be sure the ground underneath was stable enough to stand on. Other times, it felt like one step backward for every two steps forward and excruciatingly slow progress.

Sometimes I've been stuck at an obvious crossroads trying to decide which way to turn, how to move forward in a positive, healthy way. With multiple disabled family members and the attendant emotional upheaval that accompanied key turning points, I spent lots of sleepless nights reflecting before acting. I guess I thought everyone did this. During those times, my personal mantra has always been to make decisions in such a way as to be able some time in the future look back without regrets, knowing I did everything I could have done.... to advocate for, to nurture, to stabilize, and to mend those in my care.

I guess what baffles me sometimes is the reaction, when I tell others my story. They act as if what I've done is unusual, somehow laudatory, while to me it just seems what any normal person would do. Why does doing the right thing, caring for others, doing your best, seem so unusual to them? Is my moral compass set to a different “north?” How does that happen? I know I am my parents' child, and that I absorbed my sense of justice and notions of integrity from growing up in their household. But I wonder, for those who reason differently, what did they see and hear that made them so?

What do you think?