January 5, 2008,
Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City, Utah, 2008)
An old saying claims we judge other people by their actions, but always judge ourselves by our motives. In other words, we always have an explanation for our own behavior.
There’s truth there. As the crusty old district attorney says on “Law & Order” — “It goes to motive.” Nail down the motive and you nail down the truth.
And having just come through a season of caring and sharing, need and greed, I find motives are on my mind. Not your motives. My own. It was e. e. cummings who said every deed is self-interested — with the most charitable among us being the most self-interested.
That’ pretty cynical — for a poet.
But is there something to it?
I’d like to think that the kind things I do are purely benevolent, but I also know how easy it is for me to deceive my own brain. I can stand on the fairway of a golf course, for instance, and trick my brain into believing I actually have the skill to hit a three-iron into a green that’s 200 yards away, over a lake and surrounded by bunkers. And not just hit a three-iron shot, but a “high, soft” three-iron.
To borrow a line from Kurt Vonnegut, “Thank you, big brain.”
The mind is easily tricked. So it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to learn that all my wonderful generosity at Christmas was because, in the end, I knew there’d be something in it for me — self-satisfaction, maybe, or peace of mind, less guilt or maybe even points in heaven. Yet, as I age and learn, I’m coming to realize that’s all perfectly OK. I’m coming to believe the old saying, “It’s the thought that counts,” is not as true as, “It’s what gets done that counts.” And if my sons and daughters had a sweeter holiday because their old man did something positive in their lives, it really doesn’t matter if — down in the nooks and crannies of my brain — one of my motives was so they’d appreciate me.
And the same goes for everyone who does good in the world.
If you want to make sure you write the biggest check of the night at a fund-raiser because you like feeling loved, or if you build a theater, gymnasium or the wing of a hospital and want to put your name on it, have at it. Go for it. People should thank you for having the impulse to fulfill your self-interest in a positive way instead of, say, holding up a liquor store.
As I get longer in the tooth, motives — my own and those of others — interest me less and less. What interests me more and more is what gets accomplished. I throw my weight these days behind a quote from the American minister, Henry Ward Beecher: “Our gifts and attainments are not only to be light and warmth in our own dwellings, but are to shine through the window into the dark night to guide and cheer bewildered travelers.”
Say what you wil about some of my motives, today my children are better off, and they do appreciate me.
And Utah has some wonderful facilities and programs thanks to the “enlightened self-interest” of wise people.
Now, I just have to convince golfer Mike Reid that it’s in his own self-interest to teach me to hit that three-iron.