Because You Are Watching

One wintery morning just after I turned six, my mom took me to a convenience store. More than likely, she was getting a Diet Coke. I’m sure she purchased a little treat for me at the same time. What stands out most in my mind, though, was the candy bar that I carefully slipped into my pocket, certain no one had seen me.

I wasn’t stealing that candy bar because I was starving. I simply stole it because I wanted it. For some reason it didn’t occur to me to simply ask my mom for it.

I knew that stealing was wrong, but my desire for the Three Musketeers overpowered my will to do the right thing. And, it only took a moment.

Triumphant, I walked to the car holding my mom’s hand while also carefully protecting my pocketed treasure. We got into the car and I produced the candy bar, succumbing to the desire to eat it right then and there.

My mom, glancing over her shoulder before backing the car out of the parking stall, saw what I was doing before I even had a chance to peel back the wrapper. She put the car into park and told me to get out of the car. Then, she marched me back into the store to explain to the store attendant what I had done.

I placed the candy bar on the counter and hung my head — more ashamed that I’d been caught than for what I had done.

My mom didn’t purchase the candy bar after explaining that I was just a child learning a valuable lesson about not stealing. The greater lesson came when she didn’t pay for it. We simply left the candy bar on the counter as she dragged me outside. Into the car we went, once again, and drove home in silence.

That was nearly 40 years ago, but the details are as plain to me as the day they happened. I don’t have a great memory so that’s especially significant.

I think my mother handled the situation exactly right. There was no reward after making amends for doing something I shouldn’t have done. I just got to sit with the consequences.

The lesson worked. I’ve never stolen anything from another store again. I’ve even been known to drive all the way back to a fast food restaurant to pay for an additional food item accidentally placed in my to go bag.

I will say, however, that I’ve probably stolen my fair share of pens from work over the years so there’s still room to improve.

Of course, the theft of tangible goods isn’t the only thing that can impugn our integrity. There are myriad ways to lie, cheat, and steal in the world today.

That’s not what this is about, however.

Let’s talk about what this is about:

Integrity is a quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. It’s also a state of wholeness; being undivided.

I emphasize strong moral principles because morals are a tricky thing to standardize.

Morals are a person’s standards; their belief system that governs what is and isn’t acceptable to do or say.

The term moral relativism has gained a lot of traction in recent years. It is an idea that moral judgments are true (or false) only relative to some particular standpoint and that no standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others. It’s more commonly couched in the term my truth.

I’m a moral relativist when I say I believe there are certain morals that create the underpinnings of a society. If I were to enumerate those here, there would likely be people who agree and disagree with me.

To a degree, I believe individuals should have the right to define their own moral code. That degree should be limited, however, in the ways the moral code of one person intersects with another. For example, I could adopt a moral code that it is acceptable for me to injure another person for no good reason. (There are, of course, certain moral codes that embrace when it’s okay to injure another person. You may or may not adhere to one of those.)

Now my example might be an extreme one, but it illustrates the point that my moral code should not infringe on the rights of other people.

It’s a two-edged sword: give people the freedom to govern and think for themselves vs. laws and statutes to define a societal moral norm.

Societal issues aside, when considering your own integrity it is about REALLY being true to who you are. That’s also tricky because, to a degree, every person marches to the beat of someone else’s drum. That’s true because we all make snap judgments about so many things. We can’t take a philosophical approach of analyzing ever decision we make or we’d never get dressed in the morning.

So then, being true to who you really are is about identifying the big things that define your moral code. I’ll let you work out what those “big things” are for you.

The growth and development of you individual moral foundation is a life-long process. Regularly — frequently even — you will have experiences that challenge the foundation you’ve built, particularly if your foundation is loosely built on the ideals of others.

At the end of the day and in most ways, you get to choose and build your own moral foundation. Most of the time, nobody but you is watching. So, whatever it is, make sure you do the right thing.