“Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness.” Kahlil Gibran
There is a Native American village in northern Michigan very near where I spent the summers of my youth. It has improved much in the past thirty years, but when I was a kid it was a very poor collection of shacks and rusted automobiles. The houses were small, and falling apart, the windows broken or boarded up. Doors hung crooked on broken hinges, and in some places you could see sunlight through the gaps in the walls. I remember being very young and seeing happy children in dirty clothes playing in the yards of those places.
When I was 16, I dated a girl whose parents had a lot of money. I mean, my family was not exactly poor, we were fortunate to be able to spend our summers on Lake Michigan, but her folks had REAL money. She grew up in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the Detroit area, but she went to boarding school in northern Michigan, which is where we met. We had been dating for about 9 months and she was riding with my parents and me when we passed through the Indian village one day.
I can still see the look on her face. It was incredulous. Her eyes were wide, looking around her, but then she started to laugh. She made a few jokes, the kind that a teenage girl might make at the expense of another girl whose sweater does not match her skirt. I remember I just wanted to crawl into a hole, I couldn't believe that my parents were hearing my girlfriend behave like this. That relationship did not last long beyond that moment.
I know now that it wasn't entirely her fault, she didn't understand American poverty; she had never seen American poverty. It had been hidden from her all her life. That day the veil was drawn back and exposed to her the reality of poverty and race in America.
Up until that point, I had not given much thought to how the way I had been raised had influenced the way that I saw the world. I hadn’t thought much about how the kind of people that raised me would shape the kind of man I would become.
Without being able to avoid it, each person learns ethics from his or her parents, grandparents, and teachers what they teach in words and perhaps more importantly through their actions. These teachings shape our most fundamental attitudes about what is "right" and what is "wrong."
I don’t remember my parents ever teaching it to me, but I knew my whole life that I was born with more advantages than those kids in that Indian Village, and that I had done nothing to earn it. I also knew that it was my responsibility to lend a hand to help pull them up some day.
It seems that my childhood was filled with proverbs. My parents and my grandparents had favorite sayings that I heard over and over throughout my life. They were simple truths that taught important lessons about life and love, and right and wrong.
I adored my grandmother. She was an Indiana farm girl that grew up roaming the cornfields around her small town with a 22 rifle in a pair of overalls. She shot on the Indiana University Men’s Rifle team (there was no women’s team back then) She was absolutely brilliant; I used to love to sit and talk about politics and history with her. She also had folksy saying for every occasion, If you asked, “how are you, Helen?” she might reply “Finer than frogs hair.” (to which the correct follow-up would be, “Well, that’s pretty fine!) But sometimes she would say:
“Some days are better than others, but don’t you ever wish away a single day of your life!”
To my grandmother, life was precious. It was unethical to not treasure your friends and family, or appreciate every day that you can spend with them on this earth. The last time I heard her say that she was 101 years old. I learned a lot from her.
“The Holy Land is everywhere.” Black Elk
I did not grow up with organized religion, although my parents did believe in god. My religious education came in the form of a book called Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. It was originally published in 1931, but when it was reprinted in 1961 it became a best seller. My parents read it and were deeply moved by his lessons of respect for the earth and responsibility to all living things. It was the only book that my parents ever insisted that we read. There is a story in the book where Black Elk describes a buffalo hunt, and giving thanks to the buffalo for the meat that he will use to sustain his family. I have been a fisherman and a hunter, but I have always felt that animals are not just targets for us to shoot at.
“You are more likely to find god in a cornfield than a church.”
In the late 60s they helped form an environmental action group in northern Illinios called “The McHenry County Defenders.” For the first few years the Defenders meetings were held in our living room. The whole family participated in the Defenders, stuffing envelopes, collecting signatures, cleaning up dump sites, etc. It is where I learned the ethic of what it means to work hard to be a force for change in the world. 40 years later, the group is still around and although there is no mention of them on the history page of the Defenders website, it is their legacy.
“My rights end at the tip of your nose.”
For years my dad smoked on airplanes. Not as a passenger, he smoked in the cockpit. He was the captain, and it was totally up to him if smoking was permitted in the cockpit. And his attitude was “It is my cockpit and I will smoke if I want to.” At some point his attitude changed and I remember him saying. “I was wrong. I have the right to kill myself with cigarette smoke, but not anyone else. My rights end at the tip of your nose. ”
He made it clear though, that “the tip of your nose” meant more than just cigarette smoke. He believed that we should all be free to live our lives as we see fit, so long as our freedom did not impede upon the freedoms of others.
My dad has had three triple bypasses, balloon angioplasty, laser angioplasty, a stent, and is currently suffering from vascular dementia. My brothers and I don’t smoke. We learn some lessons from our parents that they never hoped to teach us.
“There is no such thing as a fight with just one ‘Mulligan.’”
Simply put, it means we stick up for each other, but it bears a big responsibility. My dad made it clear, if your brothers always have your back, you had better make sure you are on the right side. I have two sons of my own that are grown men now. When they were in 1st and 3rd grade, respectively, I received a call from the principal telling me that both my boys suspended for fighting and to come get them. When I got to the school they were sitting outside the office looking scared. My youngest, Cavan, was crying and I asked what happened. Evidently some older kids were pushing him and telling him that his big brother is a “faggot.” He couldn’t take it and he snapped, piling into the bullies, swinging his arms and hitting as many as he could. I turned to Tim, his big brother and asked, “so why are YOU here?” He looked me right in the eye and said “I didn’t let him fight alone Dad.” That was not a bad day for me.
“Profit without compassion is a waste of time.”
Not all life lessons come from your parents. When I was in my early twenties I had a college professor named Ted Schlee. He was a successful entrepreneur that taught night classes for Ferris State University in Traverse City in the early 80s. He used his own business reports as teaching aids in class and one night as we were reading his balance sheets someone asked what a certain account was. He explained that the account represented profit that exceeded his goals. He had a policy that he set production goals in his little factory and if his employees exceeded it he gave them 100% of the excess profit. We were all dumbfounded. One person said, “that seems a little extreme don’t you think?” His response was “nope, I didn’t do anything to earn it. There is nothing wrong with making a profit, but growth for the sake of growth itself is the sole purpose of the cancer cell, and profit without compassion is a waste of time.” That simple statement served as a foundation for how to conduct myself as a leader in my professional life. To me, it served as a reminder that the people that I was responsible for were not there to serve my agenda, they had wants and needs of their own. If I, as the representative of management, was able to help them meet their needs, then they would help me meet mine.
“These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.” Groucho Marx
Our ethical systems are, of course, so much more than just a collection of odd proverbs and folksy sayings. Throughout the course of our lives we meet so many people who affect us in so many ways. We experience, joy and pain, and love and loss, and each experience helps to shape who we are. At the age of 50, the path I have taken to arrive at my personal ethics is far too long and complex to follow, these quotes and experiences are meant to illustrate a few things that are important to me.
Be fair. Be Honest. Be loyal.
Always strive for the best possible outcome for all involved.
If you do the right thing you will usually achieve the right outcome.
I believe that my own ethics are constantly evolving, when I was 30 years old I am sure that I would have written this quite differently. It will be interesting to see how my perspective has change when I am 70.
