M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

Bonds That Make Us Free, Part 26: Doing the Right Thing
by C. Terry Warner

The Right Thing for the Right Reason
To stop betraying ourselves is obviously the most direct way out of the emotional and psychological messes that self-betrayal creates. By ceasing self-betrayal we abandon our reasons for accusing others in our hearts. And when accusation ceases, we are able to see others as they really are and to love them.

But ceasing to do wrong requires more than merely abstaining from certain actions, though that is essential. It also requires doing right. If we don't take positive steps to do right when we feel we should, we instantly plunge back into the emotionally dark business of wrongdoing. Not doing right when we know what's right is doing wrong.

And, in fact, one of the best strategies for escaping the emotional troubles we've been talking about in this book is simply to do what we honestly perceive to be the right thing to do.

But how is this possible? Haven't we been saying that, when we're living in an I-It mode, we can at best produce actions that counterfeit the good things we should be doing? How then can we self-betrayers ever do something that's genuinely good?

The story I'm about to share came from a middle-level information technology manager named Benson. Up to the time when the story unfolds, he had only two interests in life—his work and playing his drums in a band that performed three or four nights a week. New software strategies filled his head whenever he wasn't mending, polishing, or playing his drums. Virtually absent from his life experience was any concern about the needs and interests of other people. Yet, as his story shows, he did something genuinely good. The fact that someone who had been self-absorbed for a lifetime could act according to his deepest sense of what was right supports my contention that each of us is capable of this, even if we start out not wanting to.

We've had a major project to network our systems to our vendors on one end and our outlets on the other. Our profits have been slipping and this would help us meet our projections. The whole company was depending on us. We'd turn out the heroes or the goats.

But we run into all kinds of problems. Then Eric, our smartest software guy, can't stay past 5:00 for two nights in a row because his boy had a birthday, first, which I thought was pretty lame, and then his wife has to go into the hospital. Nuts! By now I'm pretty crabby because I'd missed a lot of sleep with no end in sight.

That was Wednesday. Friday the band had lined up one of its best ever gigs and I could see me missing it. Next day we aren't making any progress and Eric gets a call saying his wife is worse. He's got to go and I hear him calling around to see if he can drop his kids off at people's houses. When he goes out he's embarrassed and says he'll come in as early as he can, but he'll have to pick up his kids and feed them and see how his wife is doing. As far as I'm concerned my gig's completely out the window.

About 7:30 I catch a few minutes' sleep and when I wake up, I can see just as clear as day how ugly I've been to Eric. He needed someone to help, not someone to beat him up. I drive to the hospital and say, "Look, the last thing you need is to worry about anything besides your family. I'll take care of the project till you can come in."

Next day I'm dragging and discouraged but I think, I bet Eric's got more troubles. So I go back to the hospital and sure enough, it looks like his wife might not make it. Even though it's Friday I say to him, "I'll help you. I'll pick up your kids after school and take care of them." When I say this a powerful feeling I've never felt before comes on me and I have to control myself. He's pretty emotional too and says I'm the only person who has really wanted to help him. He tells me about how his wife has been sick for years and all his troubles.

While he's talking it's like he morphs into a different person right before my eyes, from someone letting me down into someone who really matters to me, and taking care of his troubles gets bigger and more important to me than the project at work and even the gig that I'd looked forward to so much. It was like I could see his soul, like all of a sudden I had something really important to be doing with my life.

Clearly, what Benson did wasn't a counterfeit kind of goodness. We know this from the change that took place in his attitude. Though prior to his kind actions he had been thoroughly self-absorbed, he came to an awareness of the right thing to do and did it.

How did he do it? How could he do a genuinely good thing when Philip I, self- righteously cleaning the house, could only produce a counterfeit? And Glen, with his plucky Christmas industriousness, could only produce a counterfeit? And I, "trying my best" to react maturely when Matthew was making demands of me, could only produce a counterfeit?

There are two answers to these questions, two significant differences between Benson and the three men I mentioned. First, though initially he could not act out of love for his colleague because he did not yet love him, he nevertheless could do something that wasn't self-absorbed. He could do the right thing simply because it was right—because that was how he felt he ought to act.

And that is precisely what he did. He had been upset with Eric. Then, after his nap, he felt bad about it. He realized he had been in the wrong. This is the second way he differed from Philip I, Glen, and me; he said to himself, "I can see how ugly I've been to Eric. He needed someone to help, not someone to beat him up." This self-honesty enabled him to appreciate Eric's plight and then want to help. At this point he had not yet experienced that surge of feeling and respect that came later, so these could not have motivated him to the degree that they did later on. Primarily, he went to the hospital the first time just because it was right.

Much of this and the two subsequent sections will be devoted to the important role played by the two things Benson did that enabled him to escape the box—he did the right thing because it was right, and he honestly confessed that up to that point he had been doing wrong. We will discuss these two factors in that order.

Integrity Leads to Love
Though doing right because it's right may not immediately give rise to respect and love, as it did in Benson's case, the chances are that respect and love will come if we persist—even in hard cases.

By doing right because it is right, we divest ourselves of the reasons we have had for finding fault and thus open ourselves to be affected by the truth about others—to see them as they are, to understand their worried and anxious interpretation of what is happening. As they thus become more real and important to us, we become more concerned for them and are able at last to do the right thing not just because it's right, but also out of love.

This was Benson's experience exactly. He started out irritated with Eric. He got a little rest and then in one of those stunning acts of self-honesty of which we all are capable he admitted to himself that he had not been kind to Eric. So he did what he felt he ought to do to help him. Then the following day, even though tired, he went further and visited the hospital again. It was then that he opened himself up to be influenced by another being's inner reality, and respect and love awakened in him.

Notice that when we're thus awakened to the reality of another soul, our desires and our duty toward others come together; we delight in serving them as we feel we should. Benson's story serves as a testament to that fact. From his initial I-It point of view, he couldn't imagine how this could be—he thought nothing could be less interesting or exciting, or more disruptive and annoying. But that's because he couldn't comprehend love while he remained self-absorbed. He could not imagine what advantage he could find in merely doing what love dictates, whereas when his heart changed it became a matter of utmost urgency.

A Step We Can Take
I want to illustrate the power of doing the right thing because it is right with a story that differs from Benson's in a crucial and very instructive respect. Awareness of another's soul and the respect and love that attend it do not take the author of the story by surprise, as they did Benson. The author longed for that love, but in spite of a great deal of effort found it very difficult to attain. Yet in the end his persistence paid off.

As part of the work of the Arbinger Institute, several individuals were preparing to teach some of the materials presented in this book. They were struggling to bring to their teaching the right kind of heart. Like most of us, they had assumed that teaching means adopting the role, the posture, the social position, and the mask of the teacher. This kept them from being real to, and reaching the hearts of, their students. Like many people in every walk of life—administrators, performers, counselors, artists, and parents—they couldn't quite forget themselves. Given a chance to teach their students, they could manage only to teach their subject.

One of these teachers, Doug, seemed unable to shed his particular burden of self-concern. For several years prior to the time of this story he had been struggling through an unreconciled conflict with a colleague. He had tried for years to resolve their differences, doing thoughtful things for the man, apologizing for misunderstandings, holding himself back for fear of offending—all to no avail. "Still there remained between us a tension," he wrote, "a binding yet repelling force that affected not only both of us but our families."

Coincidentally, Doug at this time was preparing to relocate to another state. He knew he would not have other opportunities to make reconciliation with his colleague. Yet try as he might, he could not discover where he had been at fault—how could he rectify a wrong he could not identify?

On the day before his move, Doug took his last possible opportunity, still not knowing what he ought to do. Here in his own words is what happened:

I had intended to go over to this man's house between meetings, but was detained. Suddenly I saw this man walk across the parking lot to his car. I cut short the conversation I was in and almost ran after him. When I caught up with him I put my hand on his shoulder from behind, turned him around, entwined our forearms, then pulled him close to me. When you pounce on someone like that it usually means that you have something important to say. But what was I supposed to say? I still wasn't sure what my offense was.

It was not until the very moment I looked directly and deeply into this man's eyes for the first time in years that I could see my sin. At that moment I no longer saw him. I saw myself reflected! Where there had been no words to say, I found myself asking this good man for his forgiveness. "Why?" he asked. I heard myself reply, "Because I have loved you less. That is my sin: I have loved you less." Tears filled our eyes as I told him then that I loved him. He knew that I loved him. Whatever else I said after that really didn't matter much. After we parted I glanced back once to see him still standing where I had left him, his head down, and his shoulders gently rolling with his sobs.

Doug had striven for reconciliation for years. Though he had done all he could think of to do, his heart hadn't changed. It wasn't because he had made all that effort in order to please his vanity or to justify himself. He had made the effort because he knew his heart was not yet right toward his colleague; he could not stand to think he was offending him, even inadvertently, without trying to do something about it.

We do not control the timing of a change of heart. We make ourselves available for it by faithfully doing the right things for the right reasons; that much does lie within our control. But just when and how a change of heart will come we cannot force. It's like physical healing: our spirits, like our bodies, seem to know how to heal themselves when the obstacles to healing are removed. Our part—the part in which deliberation, planning, will-power, and persistence play their roles—consists of removing the obstacles.

Thus when Doug's change of heart finally came, it was partly because of his efforts over a long period of time. Imagine how different his experience in the parking lot would have been if he had kept a stiff and judgmental distance from that man all those years (and indeed it's doubtful that he would have gone out there at all)!

Lifted Out of Ourselves
The practical implications of this are obvious. We have learned in this book that, stuck in an unwanted I-It way of being, we cannot see how to change to the I-You way of being directly. Nevertheless, we can always do so indirectly. We can always, as a first step, do what seems right because, for us, it is right. And we can persist in doing it because it is right. And this is all we can do deliberately; it lies within our power.

But this much is enough. It lifts us out of self-absorption. It removes our defensiveness. It puts us in the mode of yielding to the truth—specifically the truth about ourselves and about what is right. And in this mode, we are available to be touched and softened by the truth about others.

Problems with Self-Improvement Goals
It is helpful to compare doing the right thing for the right reason with the idea of self-improvement, which can be found in one form or another almost everywhere in our culture. A product of that culture, I, too, have taken my turn being captivated by this idea. Discontented with myself at the age of twenty, I carefully listed every significant rule of conduct I could think of or could find in the books I respected. I told myself that if I could strictly abide by each one of them without exception, I might be able to rid myself of what I did not like in myself. It seemed my only chance. I smile now at my naiveté, but in those years I was desperate. I could not see anything else I could do.

Yet even then I knew deep down that my strategy wouldn't work. It was my motives that troubled me. If my motives stayed the same, wouldn't all my scrupulous rule-keeping amount to just so much hypocrisy? It couldn't really allay my self-doubt and bring me peace. What was I to do? It seemed that my method for getting my heart right wouldn't work until my heart was right! I hadn't sufficiently grasped the principle of simply doing the right thing for the right reason, in the faith that this would break the stranglehold of pride and selfishness.

Many self-improvement projects suffer from this same confusion. We set out to "re-invent" or "re-engineer" or "make over" ourselves personally. This requires imagining the kind of person we want to be and taking that image as our goal. Then we guide our efforts by that visualized image. Since we're trying to change from the unacceptable, self-absorbed condition we are in, our motives spring from that condition, and there's the rub. Being self-absorbed, we pay minimal attention to others' hopes and needs except when they serve to advance our self-improvement. This is true even if we say we're doing it to help them. Everything we do to obtain the goal embroils us ever more deeply in being the way we don't want to be.

Sometimes advice-givers acknowledge the need for a change of heart by cautioning that their instructions need to be carried out wholeheartedly and sincerely. They add the notion of a changed heart almost as if it were a worthwhile afterthought and not difficult to implement. They assume that it's the easy part when in fact it's the hardest part of all. In spite of the fact that our success in following their advice hinges upon the quality of our intent, they rarely offer us any effective suggestions for attaining the necessary change of heart.

In the next section, we'll look at the second factor that enabled Benson and Doug to genuinely do the right thing—self-honesty....

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