Reason Doesn't Equal Right

I complained yesterday to our Senator that I had observed an OHP officer driving in traffic while talking on her cell phone. I was told “Troopers sometimes use cell phones for one-to-one secure communications”. My reply was, “why does that make the action any safer?”

Karen told me last night that a school secretary was rude to her and demanded to know why she needed to make a Xerox copy while on their campus instead of in her own office. When Karen pointed out that she was twenty miles from her own office and needed the copy for one of the students, the secretary apologized and said “we’re limiting all of our copies because of budget cuts”.  So that means you can be rude?

When a friend’s husband recently got caught cheating on his wife he said it was because “I met her online”. Would your behavior have been different if you had met her at the grocery store?

One of my students hit his classmate the other day and I asked him why he did it. His reply was, “because he cut in front of me in line”. And you suddenly couldn’t speak, so you hit him?

Justification begins at an early age. And we are the ones to blame. After the initial “did you do it?” the next question off our lips is usually “why?”- as if a good enough reason will make it right.  Unfortunately it sometimes seems that it does. We don’t punish a child for doing something wrong because we understand why he did it. But often the child only understands “Hey I got out of that with some smooth talking!” It’s a slippery slope because eventually the justification starts being the catalyst for action. “So and so did this, so I’ll…”  “I’m the victim here so I can…” “I didn’t get ____, so I deserve___.”

I suppose I’m old fashioned, but I’d like to think that the reason to do most things is because it’s the right thing to do.

Just thinking out loud.

Have a great day!

 

 

 

Comments

[Megan]

Meant to tell you . . . love this post.