True North

Everyone has an independent view on morality it seems. Often, we break it down with such detail that we break it down to nothing. We think of morality as subjective or based on the culture— the values of the men and women who subscribe to Sharia Law will be different than the values of a gay atheist living in Portland, OR. We think of morality as scriptural— we get our values based on religious doctrines and we let them be the compass for how we perceive a “good” life to be in ourselves, and where we draw boundaries within our own culture or personal relationships. And many of us, including myself at one time in my life, believe morality to be essentially an illusion— a complete fabrication constructed by early humans to maintain order in a normally barbaric and inhumane early society.

In life you may find yourself directionless from time to time. You will without any uncertainty find yourself in circumstances that present themselves to you unexpectedly that you have not had adequate time to evaluate. Therefore, you may find yourself going through with unexpected and highly impactful decisions based on erraticism or instinct. In each of these situations our personal set of morals and values collide with our innate reactionary instincts, and we make our decisions either within our personal definitions of right and wrong, or we make decisions with our animal instincts— our ‘fight or flight’ reflex.

It’s important for us to know that when we view morals or personal values, they are not dependent on circumstance. If we allow circumstance to be a deciding factor in how we define morality than the boundaries of morality are in a constant state of fluctuation and redefinition. If, for example, we use the well-regarded value of commitment— we can agree commitment is either existent or it is not. You are not half-committed to something. You may make the claim that you are, but on a moment-to-moment basis you are either committed or you aren’t. If an alcoholic is committed to no longer drinking, he wouldn’t then only drink on Friday nights. He doesn’t leave himself a place for his commitment to sobriety to be on hold until the next day. That would be an example of being committed Saturday through Thursday, failing in your commitment on Friday, and recommitting on Saturday once again. If you are committed to getting in shape and you decide you are going to take a week off training and eating healthy, you are foregoing your commitment that week.

Commitment to yourself is an easy step to take. I can discipline myself for eating a piece of cake when I’m on a no-sugar diet and move on easily. The problem presents itself when we add extreme circumstance to the scenario—'I made a commitment to my wife when we were married that we would be together, as one body, through sickness and through health, until death do us part. I then found out she was cheating on me with a close friend of mine, so we were divorced.’ It’s easy to say that a man or woman who was wronged in a marital situation with something such as infidelity or abuse should feel no guilt to leave the relationship, and in many cases that is the best option or them at the time. But does that mean the value of commitment suddenly isn’t important? The circumstance doesn’t devalue commitment, the vow of commitment is broken due to the circumstance. In other words, the choice to cheat or the choice to divorce doesn’t make the value of commitment cease to exist because of the circumstances, it is simply disregarded. In this case, it may be best for the spouse who was wronged to get themselves out of the situation and recommit to themselves, maybe giving an opportunity to someone else who values commitment as much as they do. But it doesn’t excuse a situation in which two people disregarded their supposed valuing of commitment.

This particular value (commitment), even with its circumstantial contradictions, is an easy target to exemplify because most people and most cultures can agree upon its importance. And even when it comes to the example of divorce, some people may disagree with me, but most would be able to easily see how I or someone else could cling to that principle. You see, however, as you dig into more controversial examples that hit closer to home in modern day Western culture (homosexuality, wartime murder, abortion… etc.), how the topic can provide a very hard and slow-moving conversation with little give on either side. The reason, once again, is that we cloud our definitions of right and wrong with circumstance and emotion.

It especially becomes challenging when we enter ‘love’ and ‘compassion’ into the equation, because we often think to love or feel compassion for someone is to condone their actions. But does a parent who loves their child condone their child disobeying them? To punish your child, or even to allow your child to receive the natural punishments issued as a result of their actions, does not mean you don’t have love or have compassion for your child. It means quite the opposite. Your understanding of the consequence of their actions is superior to theirs, so it becomes your responsibility to present (or allow it to be presented) that which they do not know or understand.

 At first glance when you see the word ‘condone’ you might think just because you allow something, it doesn’t mean you condone it. “I don’t condone a woman’s choice to abort their child, I just believe it’s her body and her right.” The fact of the matter is, by definition, to condone is not only to allow but to also approve of. If you think that a child in the womb that is in its earliest stages of development, it does not have a pulse, and likely has yet to develop an affinity for ‘love’ and ‘compassion’, is not by your meaning ‘living’ enough for you to condone its preservation, then by all means, condone abortion. But if anything in you believes that even at the earliest stages of its development it is ‘alive’, then you are condoning the taking of a life due to circumstance. And we should all agree, taking a human life is not worth condoning.

You can go on endlessly with different circumstances and excuses for right and wrong, and an intelligent person will be able to refute the idea of its existence fairly easily. But I would be remised if I did not acknowledge a great possibility and likelihood that our conscience is not merely shaped situationally, but something much deeper than physical circumstance. It would be shortsighted in my belief to assume that something as serious as the taking of a life, or even something as basic as not being true to your word, would be a value that could vary if I were to travel to a part of the world where it was not common. If that were the case, then any set of even the most unimaginable wrongs (rape or molestation, mass murder… etc.) could be circumstantial and left up to interpretation. If that were the case than we are no different than our barbarian ancestors who more resembled beasts than the inventive, creative, compassionate, and unselfish homo sapiens we imagine ourselves to be now.

The idea that morality is not a victim of circumstance is not a new idea. All of the world’s major religions subscribe in some way to a belief that morality is endowed spiritually rather than physically developed. However, we often couple our disregard of their respective doctrines with a disregard of their moral teachings because they are outdated. “To implement the Old Testaments book of Deuteronomy into modern society would move morality backwards.”  To the naked eye, I can completely understand that. And I could write another two-thousand words in defense of Old Testament teachings as they relate to New Testament in the Christian Bible. I could write another about the immoral implications of religion coinciding with government and limiting freedom of choice.  To elaborate on either would distract from the overall point:

Morality is concrete. Just as a compass will direct us to the gravitational North of the earth, the magnetic pole of the earth will always change, but the northernmost axis will always occupy the same spot in relation to the sun, despite what a compass tells us. Our relationship with our moral guidelines do not deviate from their truth because of circumstance and it is our job as citizens to reinforce our inner morality. In a perfect world we could point to others and say “that is wrong!” and in some cases that is necessary, but it must first take place on an individual level. We must first recognize we as individuals are not bigger than the morals that guide us. We change, the world around us changes, the circumstances we come up against evolve as our species evolves—but that does not mean the value of community, love, charity, discipline, forgiveness, honor, truth, and the scariest of all, accountability, are to evolve as well. It is our moral ‘true north’ that elevates our being to a level not shared by any other living organism discovered up to this point. If morals are to evolve, than we have lost what got us to this point in the first place.

Pack Weight

If we were to itemize the things of greatest value in our lives we would nearly all answer our family and friends. Maybe we would be more specific and answer something along the lines of ‘my relationship with my kids’ or ‘time spent with loved ones.’  

                While it may be true that these are in fact the things that mean the most to us, the answer would most certainly be different if we were to rephrase the question: “if your house was burning down, what items would you grab on your way out?” Then your answer may change to something of sentimental value; a photo album, a letter from your wife in high school, maybe your record collection… You could also ask what are the most monetarily valuable things in your home? You may answer your TV, your furniture, your jewelry.

                Where it becomes interesting is if you were to be asked the question in third person: “What does your brother value most?” When you look at what another person may value most you find yourself categorizing it in a different way. Instead of viewing items or relationships with attachment to a specific world view or emotion, you begin to measure value by the things said person seems to have a particular interest in or the ways an interest can consume their life.

                “Take what you need and leave what you don’t” I’d say to myself if I knew I would be hiking twenty miles a day through mountainous terrain. If I knew I had to carry every item of ‘value’ on my back with every step I took, the light in which I view what is valuable would be quite different. I might instead value the basic necessities like food, clean water, warmth, and shelter.

 Its often stated when someone ventures off on a hike or even a vacation that they just want to ‘escape it all.’ The, for lack of a better word, value in hiking or camping is that you detach yourself from the burdens and weight of every day life that we seem to habitually carry. How can you receive work emails or phone calls if you have no phone or internet connection? How can you get a bill in the mail if you don’t reside at an address? How can you be stuck in traffic if you’ve pulled the key out of the ignition and walked ten miles from the nearest road?

It all seems so great and simple. Shut off, escape it all, clear your mind. But is it really effective? If you’re addicted to alcohol, sex, social media, or reality TV, hiking or other means of detachment don’t alleviate your addiction, they simply provide you with a forced restraint. You can just as easily carry a flask full of whiskey with you into the mountains. But even if you choose to deprive yourself of it for four days in the wilderness, you will still inevitably return to a world where whiskey exists.

Just simply detaching yourself from your burdens or added weight does not ensure that you will not be once again faced with the potential of reattaching to the burdens, it only briefly robs you of your access. There is only one way to truly face your burdens, whether they be physical addiction, emotional dependency, feelings of sorrow or hatred, or even the every day stresses of work or relationships. But it is not in fact to detach yourself from them, but to instead detach them from you.

If I want to shed the weight in my pack so as to alleviate the pain that is an effect of the weight, I have to quite simply shed the weight. I can only do this effectively if I empty out the contents of my pack and limit it to the things which I see as most valuable to achieve life. If ‘to live’ is the only requirement I deem necessary to spend a week in the wilderness, I will carry only the weight necessary to achieve that goal. If ‘to live’ is the only requirement I have for my day to day life in a society, which has and will always provide me with whatever addiction or burden I choose to carry, then I might not go back to the whiskey, the toxic relationship, or the endless social media dribble. If I view myself in the third person, “What does he value most?” I may find an ugly truth. What I value is not my family, it is not the sentimental item from a loved one, and it is certainly not the things I only require to live effectively. Instead what I value is the burden that I choose to carry. It is what I choose to consume myself with; hate, fear, anger, sadness, pride. All things unnecessary for life. All causes for addiction, helpless dependency, and pain. All values I nor anyone else can afford to carry.

Lucky

You see an NFL receiver sprint past the cornerback and snag a 22-yard touchdown reception out of the air on a perfectly placed throw. You watch an MMA fighter tag an opponent on the chin with a counter punch, knocking him out cold within two minutes of the first round. A CEO for a large international startup company pulls in ten million dollars annually. Your best friend somehow scores a few dates with a girl way out of his league…

You wake up every day and hit snooze on your alarm clock. Ten minutes goes by and once again you hit snooze. By the third snooze you’re nearly leaping out of bed, throwing your clothes on, grabbing a piece of toast for breakfast, and sprinting out the door five minutes later than your conscience will allow. You get to work four minutes late, slip into the office, and begin your daily tasks seemingly unnoticed. The first few hours of the day are filled with the anxiety that at some point your boss will inevitably bring up the fact that you were four minutes late to work and give you a similar lecture to the one your mom used to give you when you didn’t wake up for school on time. But low and behold, that moment never comes. In fact, you go the entire day without ever being disciplined for having been late to work. And even though you tell yourself tomorrow you will not hit snooze, you do once again, and once again you find yourself sprinting to your car, praying to the sky that you’ll get lucky and there won’t be any major accidents on the freeway.

Where does luck end and action begin?

                It often seems as though we live in a culture invested in teaching our youth that a particular word or phrase exists, but there is no interest in teaching them of the context where said word or phrase should actually be used. Often when people see other people who’s success they envy, rather than attribute that to action, they write it off by uttering a phrase such as “lucky you.”

                It is not incorrect to assume that every person you meet has received their fair share of luck in this life. Just simply being born in the United States is in itself a great representation of good fortune or “luck.” In the United States, the average citizen makes roughly $35,000 annually, nearly twice the average of the rest of the world. Barring incredibly unlucky circumstances, quite simply being born into this country gives you a fair amount of luck right from the get go.

                Though I may not feel so lucky when I’m cold and thirsty, tossing around my tent trying to avoid vicious leg cramps while reaching down to scratch my bug bitten legs, through my wilderness ventures, I hear quite often from my peers how “lucky” I am. In many ways they are right. I was born in a country that values its unique geographical features enough to preserve them for every generation, including my own and those who will follow. But the fact that I and many others like myself take advantage of this great opportunity to immerse ourselves in the natural splendors of our landscape does not infer that there is no sacrifice required to enjoy such treasures. In fact, every few months members of congress do their best to sell off these public lands without our democratic consent.

                So where does luck end and action begin? For the NFL player, it’s when he lugs heavy pads around, running full speed ahead into another person of equal talent, risking great bodily injury for the likelihood of only playing for a few years. He sets himself apart by his will to conquer. For the MMA fighter it’s being the first one in the gym and the last one out. The bravery to stand in a cage with the most talented and skilled fighters on the planet with only the time on the mat, the days of blood and sweat, and the drive to pull their aching body out of bed in the morning to do it all again, often while working a full time job. For the CEO, it’s the time spent evaluating themselves and others. Speaking with confidence and self belief. It’s doing what needs to be done every day to set themselves apart while everyone else is four minutes late to work, hoping no one noticed. For your friend, maybe he was the only one brave enough to ask her out… or maybe he’s just lucky…

                Webster’s dictionary says luck is ‘the force that brings good fortune or adversity’. Nowhere in the definition does work ethic, sacrifice, discipline, drive, persistence, attitude, or will to succeed come into play. And if luck truly is the greatest asset an individual has on their resume of success, then it should be known and taught that it is not a reliable component to expect or be sought after. The only reliable source of “luck” is the luck the can be created every day, in every moment, with every decision you make- or don’t.