Choices and a lonely road

Perhaps it's the two glasses of wine, or perhaps it's just the events of the day but I'm about to wax philosophical.

The Gang of 100 was supposed to have a workshop today on "total integrity management." That's just a fancy business-school way of saying ethics. Unfortunately, there was a scheduling mishap and we got kicked out of the auditorium and our speaker held a quick, 10-minute session with us in the hallway of the Duck. (Which, by the way, was a sauna today. You'd think they could figure out the temperature control in a $50 million building). Anyway, the speaker is a professor at the school and teaches what sounds like a pretty amazing business ethics class. He was a little quirky, which means he'll probably be a fantastic professor, and did a great job promoting the class.

Afterwards, I was chatting with some Gang members about the class and about ethics in general. The conversation was intriguing -- I was somewhat surprised at the different values, attitudes and codes towards ethics that we all held. What I thought of as so clearly black and white was a grey area for someone else. For example, what if you run your own company and you need to make payroll so your employees can take care of their families and you can do it by making a decision that lies in your ethical grey area. What do you do?

I'm not saying I can perfectly answer that question for everyone but I found one answer in a rather unexpected place when I got home tonight. My roommate, her fiance and I watched the most recent Harry Potter movie -- you know, the one with the Tri-Wizard competition and the fabulous, ultimate middle school hellishness of finding a date to the dance. Anyway, at the end of the movie, Dumbledore and Harry are talking and Dumbledore, in all his wisdom, says to Harry, "Difficult times lie ahead. And you'll have to choose between what is right ... and what it easy."

That's often what it comes down to, isn't it? The decision that we suspect we should make ... and the decision that is just more convenient, that doesn't require extra work, that doesn't force us to face that squirmy place of admitting failure or standing alone. What a paradox. How come the right decision frequently is the toughest? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't integrity be easy? What a fallen world we must live in. Maybe one day, we'll find some sort of redemption for the craziness we've build around us.

If not in this world, perhaps in the next.