Often, my observations in our weekly Thought for the Weekend touch on some pretty heavy topics: trust, patriotism, theft, failure, gratitude and parenthood. Our company culture has made doing the right thing as routine as riding a bicycle for me and all of the members on our team. But talking about doing the right thing without sounding cliche, preachy or self-important feels like riding said bicycle on a tightrope.
I hope that I succeed at this tricky balancing act more times than I fail, but since I endeavor to spend much of my time taking the moral high ground, I thought it would be a refreshing change to take the moral low ground. This decision was inspired by a story I came across while working on one of those heavier Thoughts for the Weekend:
A teacher told her young class to ask their parents for a family story with a moral at the end of it, and to return the next day to tell their stories. In the classroom the next morning, Joe gave his example first, “My dad is a farmer and we have chickens. One day we were taking lots of eggs to market in a basket on the front seat of the truck when we hit a big bump in the road; the basket fell off the seat and all the eggs broke. The moral of the story is: “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.”
“Very good,” said the teacher. Next, Mary said, “We are farmers too. We had twenty eggs waiting to hatch, but when they did we only got ten chicks. The moral of this story is: “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.”
“Very good,” said the teacher again, very pleased with the children’s comprehension of morality tales so far. Then, it was Kenny’s turn to tell his story: “My dad told me this story about my Aunt Karen…. Aunt Karen was a flight engineer in the war and her plane got hit. She had to bail out over enemy territory and all she had was a bottle of whisky, a machine gun and a machete.” “Go on,” said the teacher, intrigued.
“Aunt Karen drank the whisky on the way down to prepare herself; then she landed right in the middle of a hundred enemy soldiers. She killed seventy of them with the machine gun until she ran out of bullets. Then she killed twenty more with the machete till the blade broke. And then she killed the last ten with her bare hands.”
“Good heavens,” said the horrified teacher, “What did your father say was the moral of that frightening story?”
“Stay away from Aunt Karen when she’s been drinking…”
Kenny’s not the only one who can poke fun at the moral high ground. You won’t believe some of those quotes from very famous people:
•Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself, “Lillian, you should have remained a virgin.” ~ Lillian Carter (mother of President Jimmy Carter)
•I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: “No good in a bed, but fine against a wall.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
•Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement. ~ Mark Twain
•Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year. ~ Victor Borge
Cover lots of ground this weekend,
~Bob
