Yea, Jeff Brooks just made that shit up on the fly during a discussion I had with him a few weeks ago. It’s a brilliant turn of phrase. There are a few phrases careening off of the walls of my skull lately.
“The stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.”
“The easy thing to do and the right thing to do are rarely the same.”
They’re all good and they all seem to apply to me lately. I’m struggling with identifying the right thing to do. My dad always says go with your gut, but my gut is silent. There is no right answer. As I get older I realize that this is the case with most things. Nothing can be responsibly boiled down to such a simple thing as to be black and white without ignoring the complexity of reality. There is no easy thing. There is no right thing.
I’ve recently completed an intro to philosophy course which was fun but has thus far confirmed my suspicions that there is no philosophy that encapsulates the complexity of the real world in such a way that it can be followed to the letter and result in the right course of action in all scenarios. There is no religion that will guide me to the right decision every time. Those things can help in many if not most scenarios; however, there are times where it purely comes down to your own decision and I think those times are the times that define your character. Thus far I have been a coward and a liar. My dad would not be proud.
In my heart I believe in a deontological approach to things, the rightness of the action is judged based on the action itself, not the outcome. I like it because there is a sense of duty and it doesn’t allow shady end-justifies-the-means justifications. The problem is that what I like and what I do are in complete contrast lately. I have a difficult time doing the right thing because I am sensitive to its impact on others. Coward… I then don’t do the right thing. Liar… Ugh.
I know what I want though. Now it’s a matter of being victorious and not surrendering and being able to look in the mirror in the morning and love the guy looking back at me.
