When Right Isn’t Wise
How “good” choices can sometimes lead to bad results.
Sometimes, when I write, I feel less like an actual writer and more like what David Brooks calls a “middleman”. “I take the curriculum of other people’s knowledge and I pass it along.”1 Perhaps I could even call myself a collector: I like to store the ideas of others on the shelf of my mind, and then pass those ideas around when appropriate (or inappropriate).
You’ll notice a trend on this Substack—I usually lead with an intersting or zany fact or story from someone else, and then I build around it. I try not to be too creative most of the time. Writers get in trouble when they get too loosey-goosey or cute with their opinions. The world is too big for my thoughts alone.
So, here’s a story I “collected” from David Brookes (who “collected” it from someone else). It’s a Russian nesting doll of sorts.
In his book The Second Mountain, Brooks writes about a hospital janitor named Luke, who faced a decision that required a flash of in-the-moment Wisdom.
In the hospital where Luke worked, there was a young man who’d gotten into a fight and was now in a coma, and he wasn’t coming out. Every day, his father sat by his side in silent vigil, and had done so for six months. One day, Luke came in and cleaned the young man’s room. His father wasn’t there; he was out getting a smoke. Later that day, Luke ran into the father in the hallway. The father snapped at Luke and accused him of not cleaning his son’s room.2
What would you say in this situation? Would you become angry? Would you outline, in specific detail, the process by which you cleaned the room? Or, perhaps, would you respond in patience, offering grace instead. “I did clean the room, sir. Let me show you how.”
Luke did none of those things.
Instead, Luke saw the man’s grief, and made a quick, wise, decision. He cleaned the room again.
As he told an interviewer later, “I cleaned it so that he could see me cleaning it….I can understand how he could be. It was like six months that his son was there. He’d been a little frustrated, and I cleaned it again. But I wasn’t angry with him. I guess I could understand.”3
I ran across an interesting term the other day: “moral imagination.” Philosophers and writers like to define the concept in slightly different ways, but the most common definition holds that moral imagination is the ability to envision the best outcome among various possible choices.
Imagine receiving an angry text from a friend. You could respond in a number of different ways: wait two hours and then call them up, drive to their house and talk to them in person, or respond via text with a lengthy rebuttal. All of these responses could be ethically okay—obviously they could be wrong depending on the words you use, but not necessarily so. A person with a strong sense of moral imagination possesses the ability to think through a number of “good” responses to find the best response (depending on the situation and the person you’re talking to).
As the story of the janitor illustrates, true Wisdom comes from having a strong moral imagination and not simply thinking in terms of “right or wrong,” but in “better and best.” Wisdom discerns when we should defend ourselves and when we should “clean the room again.”
Over the years, I’ve learned that in some situations, you have to take a “work with what you’ve got approach.” Sadly, some people are either too stressed or not emotionally mature enough to admit they are wrong. I won’t defend this trait—healthy self-awareness depends (at least in some ways) on a person’s willingness to admit failure. I also realize that some people apologize in other ways. You’d rather hear “I’m sorry,” but instead they give you a gift. Wisdom knows when the right time is for a hard conversation and when to “work with what you’ve got.”
I don’t want you to think that you should avoid hard conversations. I also think that the closer you are to someone—spouse, best friend, parents—the less prone you should be to “work with what you’ve got” and more willing you should be to “work on what you’ve got.” But this does involve a little social imagination. For example, if your spouse is rude to you after a stressful day at work, you might need to confront them. Or, you might need to caulk it up to stress and just move on. Most people either confront too much (even over trivial issues) or too little (ignoring big issues). Moral imagination means being able to discern the right moment for the right actions.
Perhaps love is sacrificing your rights and cleaning the room again. Or not replying to a snide remark when you want to defend yourself. Sometimes it’s not. Be open to either. I like to play out situations in my head, almost like I’m reading one of those books where you decide the choices the main character makes, and see where each “good” choice takes me. It’s not perfect, and I’m often wrong, but I like to think that maybe, just maybe, I am getting better.
David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life (New York: Random House, 2019), xxii. He came across this story in Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe’s book Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing (New York: Riverhead Books, 2011).
Ibid, xiv.
Ibid, xv.
I would have to admit that my Luke-ness often falls short. Maybe a little more time spent in moral imagination would help.
Dang, that's a stunning story. Profound wisdom. Quality first name, too.