My Cruelest Action

There are three things that factor into the choices that I make: what I want, knowing, and do. Though I believe that it is best for me when these three to work in tandem, I confess that the one that is most important to me is what I do.

I’ll explain.

I believe in an objective good outside of me. I believe that there are good and bad desires. I believe that there are good and bad thoughts. I believe that there are good and bad actions. I know that I like some things not healthy for me and I’ve had thoughts that I’ve later realized were wrong (in fact, this may be one of them).

I should aspire to have desires that are good for me and thoughts that are right, but I aspire most of all to do the right thing. My confession is my emphasis on my actions.

Because what I do seems to be inescapable to me, I find myself more strongly tied to my actions than my desires and thoughts.

Circumstance change how I feel and horrible diseases can strip away a person’s mind, yet there is a right thing to do. Make no mistake, those who lose their feelings or mind are in a dire position, one that I would never wish on anyone, but their actions are, nonetheless, permanent. A person who is hurt by someone who “doesn’t know any better” is still hurt, and the harm that I’ve caused when I’m sad is no less painful to the victim than harm that I cause when I’m happy.

I cannot change my actions. Once made, I can only react to them.

I call my emphasis on action a confession because I know that thoughts and desires are, in their own way, permanent as well, but I place my emphasis on actions because actions are the easiest to see.

As I think about my actions, thoughts, and desires, my mind is drawn to Charity: doing something good for someone who doesn’t deserve it. To me, that doesn’t make any sense, but I need Charity to not make sense to me. If Charity made sense, it would deserved. It’s logically deserved. At least that’s how it works for me.

I’ve begun to wonder if cruelty is the opposite of charity: doing something bad to someone regardless of if they deserve it.

I want to mention the cruelest thing I think I’ve ever done as an example of all this, but I don’t want you to be confused. By cruelest, I mean that I did something bad regardless of my thoughts and desires. I’ve done plenty of bad things because I’ve had bad intentions, but it is rarer for me to do something regardless of my intentions.

I once told a prom-date that I wanted to “just be friends” on the way to prom. That was pretty bad of me, but it’s not the cruelest thing I’ve ever done. The cruelest thing came a few days afterwards when we talked about it.

You see, I had been dating this girl for a while before prom, and I was done with trying to make the relationship work. No, that’s not quite true. I wasn’t trying to make the relationship work. I was done with it, but I didn’t have a good reason or feeling to end it. I didn’t think she was a bad person, and I certainly did not feel anything negative about her.

If you said that I dug my own hole, you would be right. There are certain things relationships need to flourish, such as intentionality, communication, commitment, etc. I didn’t practice any of that in my relationship; I preferred to just go with the flow.

The problem was that my “flow” was full of bad habits, a toxic river slowly polluting any and all relationships. Sure, the pleasant warmth emanating from it and friendly green glow made it very inviting, but it was incredibly unhealthy.

She told me she wanted to talk about our relationship (good intentionality!), saying that she didn’t think we could be in a limbo of friends who had feelings for each other (strong communication!) and, when I asked her what she thought we should do, she told me that she wanted to keep trying at it (A+ for commitment).

Quite frankly, that one moment should have shown me that she had an integrity that far, FAR outstripped my own.

But my bad habits had turned me into a bad person. I was going to do what I was used to, regardless of what my thoughts and emotions said about it, as I think both were screaming at me that I was in the wrong. My habits had long since chosen my path, so it wasn’t hard for me to break up with her without feeling bad about it.

Even if it wasn’t hard for me to do it then, it’s hard for me to look back now. You should understand that this isn’t me trying to take back what happened, but, rather, to explain why I think I made a cruel choice. The thoughts and emotions behind what I was doing didn’t matter to me, at least not in a significant way. If anything, I forced my thoughts and emotions to reinforce my toxic habits.

I see now that I was more concerned with keeping my bad habits than what was right. We probably would have broken up at some point afterwards, but I didn’t have any good reasons to do it then.

What I’ve come to realize is that, long before I make a choice, I’ve habitualized myself. Yes, choices are important, but choices have been informed by our day-to-day habits, both conscious and unconscious. No choice is made in a void.

I was cruel to a girl because I was a cruel person. The life I was living made cruelty my reality and all I knew how to do. I don’t think that I had two options before me and I chose the cruel one. I had one option before me: cruelty.

My pastor once told me that if I ever find myself fin a position where the only choice before me is a bad one, I messed up beforehand. If I am in a situation where I can only do bad, I lost the battle long ago.

I think that the only way I can do good when it doesn’t make sense is to habitualize doing good things the way I’ve done it with bad. Good is bigger than me, and I cannot say I always understand it. But it is there and it is my responsibility to conform to it. It’s my pleasure to follow it, even if I don’t always get pleasure from it. Like I said, I like things that are unhealthy for me, and either I can change or keep doing bad.

We do the things we’re used to. If I keep doing what is good, then maybe I can do that even when it doesn’t make sense. Maybe it can be such a habit that it even feels natural, like eating when I’m hungry or sleeping when I’m tired.

Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll simply do what is right.