Being Moral Means Saying "I'm Sorry"

The previous chapter introduced you to the terms behavioral expectations and problem solving. This chapter will place behavioral expectations into three categories in which an absolute morality will be based. 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 patterns 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 stagnation? 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 in this book, 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 relationship 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 anyone 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.

Copyright 2002 Jay Krunszyinsky

Please visit my Relationship Blog and Relationship Message Board for some of the most relevant discussions surrounding healthy and unhealthy relationships on the net.

Recommend This Page To A Friend!