BEING MORAL MEANS YOU ALWAYS NEED TO SAY I'M SORRY

There are many books and resources available that you can find
that outline morals or virtues. Many of the virtues fall into
three distinct categories. These consist of love, honesty, and
respect. These virtues and their negative counterparts make up
the foundation of human interactions.

Even when you make attempts to incorporate these virtues
into your behavior, you will not always succeed. You will have
instances when you will not love, respect, or show honesty with
another person. Does this mean that you are bad or abusive? Your
act of atoning is the key process that repairs the hurt that you
inflict upon another person during these times. Atoning and problem
solving are interchangeable. The sincerity of your atoning
will be evaluated by how you can shift your actions to emulate
the virtues of love, respect, and honesty. Making amends or reparations
for a hurtful act is the best way to help you integrate the
virtues of love, respect, and honesty. If you reflect back on those
times when you have been on the receiving end of a sincere apology,
you understand how powerful this process can be. Your hurt
feelings were validated by the other person’s willingness to accept
responsibility for his or her behavior and to resolve the problem.
The concepts of virtues and morals will be used here frequently.
As mentioned earlier, these terms are interchangeable
and are considered good acts from an absolute standard. You may
question by how this absolute standard is set. This standard is
based upon definitions used for the virtues of honesty, love, and
respect. Behavioral expectations can be developed from the definitions
in each virtue category. The guiding principle to these
absolutes is that an act that physically, sexually, or emotionally
hurts someone is wrong. You may instantly claim you are a moral
person based upon your initial thoughts. Physical and sexual hurt
are easier to see than emotional hurt. You will need to read further
to begin to rationally evaluate if whether you are hurting
someone in subtle ways. You will need to understand each of the
definitions of the three virtue categories.

You are cautioned not to evaluate your behavior based upon
the antonym of each virtue. For example, you may claim that you
were not dishonest, hateful, or disrespectful on any given day.
The problem with looking at the opposite side of each virtue is
that you are not promoting acts that demonstrate love, respect,
and honesty. Using antonyms will allow for you to actually do
nothing. This will be your initial instinct, since you will revert
back to irrational thinking. You may want to avoid a change in
your behavior and the conflict that may result within you.
Why is it important for you to have definitions outlined for
each virtue? Many definitions that you have been taught about
these virtues were based upon rules and codes of conduct. Rules
and codes usually tell you what you should not do and not what
you need to do. Some virtues were told to you as romantic tales
involving feelings with no objective means to evaluate them. The
definitions that follow are presented in an objective fashion to
help you begin to develop behaviors that emulate each virtue.
Honesty is not only the act of telling the truth; it also involves
ascertaining the truth about you. You most likely have never
engaged in introspection and are oblivious to your negative pat-terns
of interactions and the hurt that you are inflicting. In order
for your relationship to improve, an honest evaluation must take
place as to how you demonstrate love and respect. You may
believe you are being truthful about your behavior. To test your
thinking, you will need to learn the definitions of love and
respect. If you cannot show how you have demonstrated each of
those virtues, you have not honestly evaluated your behavior.
Love is a virtue that can be demonstrated in a multitude of
ways. Many of the definitions found in Webster’s New World
Dictionary relate love to a feeling ñ —“a passionate affection of
one person for another.” I will add two elements to the definition
of love: love requires action, and love is unconditional. Love
involves acts of kindness or generosity that do not require
response. Showing love involves displaying feelings, but feelings
should not be the driving force in how or why you demonstrate
love. If you reserve your love only for those who make you feel
good, you would will tend to withhold love more often. Children
can sometimes display behavior that arouses feelings in parents
that may not be loving. During those times, feelings of anger and
frustration can cause parents to put their children down and to
place conditions on their love for them.

Respect entails the ability to appreciate and bring out the
unique qualities of others while placing value on their opinions
and abilities. Many times, each person in a relationship may
emphasize the negative attributes of the other. Those who are negatively
impacted may begin to shift their focus from developing
special talents to repairing physical or character flaws. Have you
or the person in your relationship thought about getting cosmetic
surgery, experienced dissatisfaction at work, or experienced stag-nation?
The absence of respect may make it difficult for either one
of you to appreciate and develop natural gifts and talents.
What makes these virtues based on absolutes different from
the morals based on social customs? Doesn’t society place value
on the concepts of respect, honesty, and love? While reading the
previous chapter, you were introduced to some of the social customs
of families and schools. The concepts of honesty, love, and
respect are not found in your daily paper, the classroom setting,
family discussions, or in many of your community activities. Is
this a topic that you discuss with friends, family, or coworkers?
What do you talk about? Many people focus their discussions on
what they fear, want, envy, or feel deprived of. They focus their
energies on finding those things that will make them feel good and
hurt others along the way. This is how moral relativism can influence
a person’s actions. This is not to suggest that people do not
want to emulate good acts or do the right thing with persons in
their relationships. They have either lost or not discovered a way
to define good behavior or the right thing to do.
From the examples, you should have a clearer
picture of how relativistic views on morality contribute to irrational
thinking. Is it rational to pursue pleasure all the time? Can
you justify hurting someone because things are not going your
way? Should you have sex with whomever, whenever you please?

These questions will be easier to answer when you evaluate each
question based on the virtues of honesty, respect, and love. You
would be hard pressed to prove that you can spend most of your
time seeking pleasurable experiences while maintaining respect,
honesty, and love in your relationship. The same could be said for
rationalizing hurt and engaging in sex outside your relationship.
Following absolute standards is what will ground your relation-ship
in the truth. The truth will come from rational thoughts,
resulting from your emulating concrete virtues.

Responsibility and accountability should not be scary words
to you. You should be comfortable with these terms that are part
of knowing when you are doing the right or wrong thing. When
you begin to understand these virtues better and incorporate them
into your daily living, you will invite the opportunity to take ownership
for your good and bad behavior. You will accept your
human nature to make mistakes and will want to repair the hurt
through an atoning act.

You should not try to ignore the impact of the hurt you have
caused, because you will become a better person from your struggle
to discern what is right and wrong. Imperfections are what
make your life challenging and rewarding. You can work through
humiliation, conflict, and other difficulties in your relationship to
gain valuable life skills. The fight to do the right thing will
become the foundation of your growth as an individual. In order
to grow, you must learn how to display responsibility, accountability,
and acts of reconciliation for those times when you do not
do the right thing. Undoubtedly, you will hurt others even when
you have their best interests in mind. Through atonement or problem
resolution, you can take responsibility for hurtful actions and
demonstrate acts of love, respect, and honesty. If your acts of
hurt, both subtle and violent, continue to occur without your taking
responsibility, your partner in your relationship will grow distant
from you. He or she may end all contact. Do you really want
this to happen? You may end up doing something you will regret
the rest of your life.

Jane and her husband were very happy together. Jack had
always had a short fuse when under stress. Jane knew Jack
always had her best interests in mind. Jack was a hard worker
and worked several jobs to keep the family living in their four-bedroom
home. The couple was so proud of their two girls. They
were so beautiful. Jack was under a lot of stress at his jobs and
had not been sleeping well. He fell into more verbal outbursts
and made statements about wishing the stress of family and work
could all be over. Jane had just started a part-time job to help
alleviate some of the financial burden, which allowed Jack to quit
one of his jobs. Maggie was the youngest daughter, only a year
old. She cried a lot and experienced difficulties sleeping. Jack
was watching the girls one night and could not get Maggie to
quiet down and fall asleep. Jack had always exercised great
patience with Maggie. On this night, Jack picked Maggie up and
shook her, pleading with her to keep quiet. Maggie died from the
trauma caused by Jack’s actions.

You have a responsibility to understand how stress and your
past impact your behavior in respect to how you treat others. You
cannot go through life not recognizing the hurt that you cause. If
you do, you will hurt people just as you have been hurt in your
past. The stress of life is only going to increase as life moves at
faster and faster speeds. If you want to know how fast life is moving,
check with your Internet provider!

How many times have you said you are doing the best you
can do? How many times have you said this after you have hurt
someone? Hurting another person is not the best that you or any-one
else can do. If you want to guard yourself from crossing the
line between subtle hurt and acts of violence, you should consider
assessing your behavior on a daily basis. As you commit to a
system that helps you to develop behavioral expectations for the
virtues of love, respect, and honesty, you will begin to recognize
and repair the hurt in your relationship. The next chapter will
show you how to develop behavioral expectations and atoning
strategies for each of the developmental stages of your life based
on this absolute morality.