An essay is a little thought experiment. A good question can provoke you to try out your thoughts on paper. You may think it strange to tell writers this, but all writers need to grow and develop, or we become stale. It’s too tempting to stay in territory that is safe, well-mapped, already inhabited.
I love G. K. Chesterton’s essay on the art of writing essays.
The essay is the only literary form which confesses, in its very name, that the rash act known as writing is really a leap in the dark. …A man does not really write an essay. He does really essay to write an essay.
His writing is full of these rash acts – stabs of his intellect at the question of the moment.
In response to a question that provoked me (from the annual Great American Think-Off), “Is it ever wrong to do right?” I essayed to defend the affirmative. I could have played the game and affirmed the opposite position. This is not sophistry, but good, clean fun! A provoking question is one for which there is not an obvious, only, fill-in-the-blank answer. A contest question has the added constraint of a word limit, which just makes the game more enjoyable.
It is possible to wrong myself by doing the ‘right thing’ without true freedom.
Who can speak against paying taxes, caring for grandma, donating to the poor, sending a thank-you note, working hard? Yet all these ‘right things’ and more, take a severe toll on society when done by people who act as un-free agents. More is lost when I act under a sense of compulsion than the rosy glow of generosity, or nobility that comes from doing ‘right things’ in freedom. What is really endangered by my automatically, or grudgingly, or compulsively doing something good? Me!
Little by little, if I stop consciously choosing and owning my actions, I lose the ability to choose or give or act freely – to be free. If I’m grumbling as I diaper my father, or chafing as I turn in the wallet I found, or obeying the law because I’m afraid of getting caught, my freedom is ebbing away. We all have to do onerous things and hard things, if we care about doing the right thing, but unless we grow able to do them, or refuse to do them, in complete freedom, we sell ourselves and others short.
I need to reconnect with my self, affirm my own dignity and freedom in order to do right things rightly. I may need to admit I do not have the true willingness or resources to serve someone else right now. I may need to embrace the value of keeping peace with someone even when I don’t much value the thing I must do to achieve that goal. I may need to give more thought to higher reasons for obeying seemingly pointless rules – societal harmony, honoring God by honoring lower authority figures, setting a good example for my children. I may need to say no to the thing that is obviously ‘right’ to my peers, to the people in my political party, to my boss, to the lawmakers – and stand willing to take the consequences.
The truly right thing will never violate my self, or others. To do it without the grave wrong of diminishing my interior freedom, I’ve got to ‘own my own stuff’ – refuse to become a people-pleaser, or automaton, controlled from without. A free person must respond to exterior demands – even those of custom, law, morality, necessity, and courtesy – from a strong internal locus of control. When he merely reacts, or does the right thing without affirming his own dignity in choosing it freely, he becomes a slave or a pawn.
In our fast-paced world, we tend to be pragmatic – wanting merely that right things get done, and done quickly. We don’t honestly want to have our fellow-citizens take the time to evaluate and then to respond. “Just do it!” could be today’s mantra, but it’s penny-wise and pound-foolish. If we raise the children to ‘just do what’s right’ without developing their capacity to freely affirm the values our society is built upon, we risk turning our country over to a generation without a deep commitment to honesty, simple neighborliness, human life and worth, peaceful interfaith dialogue, responsibility, generosity, care for the environment, voluntarism, respect for duly constituted authority and law, etc….
When we put on blinders and leave it to our friends to direct us to the ‘right thing,’ we risk being led astray or betraying ourselves. When we hope media will know the answers, we risk being manipulated in droves to buy the right thing, eat the right food, back the right cause for the benefit of people who do not necessarily have our best interests in mind. How often has the ‘nice thing’ been a way out of confronting uncomfortable realities between persons, rather than the truly right thing it might seem to be?
The ‘self’ and the ‘other’ will always be in some degree of tension. The discomfort of resolving that tension cannot be sidestepped by raising people who will just do whatever they are told is ‘right.’ When we look to lawmakers to make all our decisions, we forget that, ultimately, we are the lawmakers. Historical examples of times when the right thing was not the legal thing (sheltering Jews, using the ‘whites-only’ drinking fountain) show us that the individual person must be responsible (really, able to respond) for resolving the tension between his own and another’s needs, or perspectives.
Though I agree that, as Socrates said, “It is never right to do wrong,” it is possible to do right wrongly.
I hope you’ll essay to respond to an interesting question – as a writing exercise, a thinking exercise, or just for fun.
The drama or the epic might be called the active life of literature; the sonnet or the ode the contemplative life. The essay is the joke.
Have fun! If you need some provocative questions, I hope you’ll read my book, Souls at Work: An Invitation to Freedom.
