What Moral Compass Do You Follow?

• Tweet
• Sharebar

• Tweet

Do not pollute your beautiful, radiant inner Being nor the earth with negativity. ~Eckhart Tolle Practicing The Power of Now

I heaved the last two water jugs into the back seat of my car and turned to my grocery cart. The wind blew hair in my eyes and numbed the tips of my ears as I pulled and tugged at the enormous pack of paper towels wedged underneath the child seat. With a final jerk and a rip of the plastic wrapping, it was free, and I tossed it on top of everything else.

I thumped the door closed, tucked my scarf in, pulled my jacket collar up, and turned my face down and out of the wind as I wheeled the cart away. But what’s that? Something orange was staring up at me from the bottom of the cart.

Turns out a two-liter carton of orange juice had been hiding behind the paper towels.

I paused. There was no way I had paid for it. If I had, it wouldn’t still be in the cart. It would be nestled in one of my two canvas bags stuffed with other purchases and settled in the back seat of my car. I dug around in a pocket as I pushed the cart along with my other hand.

I found my receipt, pressed out the wrinkles against the handle of the cart, and held it steady against the wind as I scanned it up and down. Nope. No orange juice.

Carton in hand, I parked the cart and welcomed the warmth of the store once again. I was in luck: the cashier who had checked me out wasn’t busy.

“Just think!” I smiled at him as he rang up my orange juice. “If I wanted to steal this I would have got away with it.”

He didn’t seem to share my sense of humor. Either he figured I had intended to steal it and my conscience got the best of me or—more likely—that he could get in trouble if a manager found out. Normally clerks in that store ask if there’s anything left in the cart to avoid what I would call opportunistic shoplifting.

Either way, it didn’t matter. My shopping was done and I could go home. I drove away, thoughtful, just as snow started to fall.

I could have saved $3 and 10 minutes if I had just shrugged and tossed the orange juice into the car without thinking about it. Nobody would have seen or, if someone did, no big deal. Stuff that was paid for falls out of bags in shopping carts all the time.

I suspect a lot of people might not go back to pay for something that somehow didn’t get paid for.

That’s happened to me more times than I can count, over the years, with variations on the theme.

One time, distracted by other purchases, I honestly forgot to pay for $5 worth of gas at a self-serve mini-market. Three years later, I went back.

I felt really, really, really stupid, but I had to do it just because it bugged me. The store had even changed hands, but the attendant was friendly as she told me this wasn’t the first time she’d seen this happen. “People have consciences,” she said. I thanked her and left, much relieved.

Three bucks here, five bucks there. What does it matter?

Why go to any trouble to set things right, especially when nobody knows but me?

I’m not any pillar of righteousness, don’t get me wrong—just yesterday I scowled and muttered a few choice words at someone who beeped her horn at me—but here’s the thing. Doing things that are “wrong” or “bad” or “negative” by any standard hurts me just as much as it hurts others.

But what’s the standard?

I didn’t have to scowl at that woman any more than I had to take that carton of orange juice home without paying for it. I have choices.

To use Eckhart Tolle’s way of putting it, I can pollute myself and the world with negative energy. Or not.

For me, it was much easier to pay for the orange juice or the gas than to halt the sudden negative energy that boiled up in a moment of irritation (which was fueled by a blasting headache and some other stuff). I had a moment to choose with the orange juice and only a nanosecond to control my reaction to a sudden blast of noise in a jammed parking lot. A moment to regret that I didn’t. Another moment to forgive myself. Hey, years ago I probably would’ve flipped her a finger. Practice, practice.

Who cares about stealing or not stealing orange juice or whether or not to scowl at a stranger?

Right. People are starving in the world, wars are going on, people are fighting for freedom. Things in life get much more complicated than my little carton of orange juice. What’s the difference, though, between stealing orange juice and stealing someone’s car or child or freedom? What’s the difference between anger that makes us scowl and anger that makes us pull triggers? It’s all energy we’re putting out into the world and feeding in ourselves. Where do you draw the line? I don’t believe there is one.

We all follow rules, regulations, guidelines, morals, and ethics of one kind or another.

Families have rules. Businesses, schools, and organizations have written and unwritten policies. Societies have laws. Religions and belief systems have moral or ethical codes: Judaism and Christianity have the Ten Commandments. Buddhism has Precepts. Islam has the Five Pillars of Islam and many other guidelines found throughout the Qur’an. Hinduism has Yamas and much more.

What code or compass do you follow? What gives you direction in life?

A lot of us don’t have any guidelines that we follow consciously, mindfully, purposefully. Even if you were brought up in a religious household, do you apply the teachings of your faith to problems going on in your marriage or with your kids or at work? How do they guide you in your day-to-day life? Do the teachings of your faith, if you have one, guide you in your actions, beliefs, and opinions?

Even if you aren’t religious or spiritual, even if you call yourself agnostic or if you’re an atheist, you still have guidelines, ethics, and moral principles that you follow. What are they? Do they serve you well?

I’m not going to give you 3 or 10 or 50 rules to live by that will make your life better or easier or more peaceful. Everyone is too different, and we’re all walking different paths.

But I will offer a question and a suggestion.

Question:

If you want to be more peaceful, if you want more peace in your life and in the world, what guidelines would you need to have in your life? Which ones work for you right now, and which ones would you need to start following or be more consistent with?

Suggestion:

If you can’t name any or feel you don’t have any specific guidelines or you just aren’t sure what they are, take some time to think about it and formulate a few. Write them down. Think about them, examine them, and revise if needed. You never know when you might need them.

In my book, moral and ethical guidelines are not necessarily the same as those of the moral majority.

They might not be what my neighbor thinks or about whether we go to heaven or hell or what my friends or anyone I know thinks. Some of them could be, but they don’t have to be. For me, my moral compass is about peace and being the change I want to see in the world. And it’s about how I can love more in 2011.

Thanks for reading, and your comments are always welcome.