Is There a Moral Tipping Point?

It’s quiet here on the river tonight, and a pea soup fog is obscuring my view. It’s the perfect time for reflection. At times like this my mind tends to wander.

I was thinking about a story that a coworker told me many, many years ago that has haunted me ever since. When he was a boy, he had a paper route. One day he was delivering his papers, and he rode his bike up to this one house and threw the paper up on the porch. He was about to pedal away when he heard this moan coming from under the house. He got off his bike and looked through the slats under the porch and he saw a boy in a cage. He was dirty and smelled bad and appeared to be severely retarded. But believe it or not, that isn’t what disturbs me the most about this story. What really gets to me is how he responded when I asked him what he did next.  He said, “I rode away. I never told anyone. And I continued delivering papers to that house.” And that was that.

And from there, my mind went to another incident. I was walking through the mall with the boyfriend I had at a time and his best friend, when we came upon a booth for the National Marrow Donor Project. Now, my boyfriend and I were already registered, so we talked his friend into signing up. His friend is mixed race, so he could very well be the only match for someone who could not otherwise find one. And sure enough, he was. The reason I know this is because I got a phone call about a year later. He had put us down as his contact if the Marrow Donor Project could not find him. He had moved to another city, and we had all drifted apart. I was really excited. He was a match! He was going to save someone’s life! So we tracked him down. And he decided he couldn’t go through with it. And that was that.

And speaking of that boyfriend, the reason we broke up was that his boss stole $3500.00 dollars from me, and not only did he not do anything about it, but he continued working for him. And that was that.

Three men, nice guys all, who did things that I could never, not in a million years, ever do. I’d have told someone about the child in the cage. I’d have donated my marrow. And if my boss stole money from someone I claimed to love, I don’t care if it was the job of my dreams, I wouldn’t continue to work for him. I’d probably be fired anyway, because they would have to pry my hands off his throat.

I know. It’s easy for me to say, not having been presented with these situations myself. The reason I know how I’d respond is that I’ve always been that person who sticks her neck out, even when it’s uncomfortable. I’m the person who reports the sexually harassing professor. I’m the one who testifies. I’m the one who files grievances, sticks up for the underdog, and generally makes a pest of myself when the situation seems to call for it. It often gets me into trouble.

I look at these three men and the one thing they seem to have in common is that they’ll do the right thing nine times out of ten, but in those really defining moments, when it’s not EASY to do the right thing, they’ll fall short. So the question is, is there a moral tipping point? Is there a defining moment in your life where, if you make the wrong choice, you’ll forever have that weakness? Once morally weak, forever morally weak? Or do we get a chance at redemption? For the sake of those who do make the wrong choice, I hope that’s the case.