Right Thing, Right Now

Virtue is something we do. It’s something we choose. Not once, for Hercules’s crossroads was not a singular event. It’s a daily challenge, one we face not once but constantly, repeatedly. Will we be selfish or selfless? Brave or afraid? Strong or weak? Wise or stupid? Will we cultivate a good habit or a bad one? Courage or cowardice? The bliss of i

“You could be good today,” Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, quite possibly as he was deliberating on some similarly controversial decision. “Instead you choose tomorrow.”

To the person you’re saving, to the person whose burden you are lessening? There is nothing “small” about it. When the Talmud says that he who saves one person saves the world, maybe that’s partly what they meant—because you certainly save that person’s whole world.

Don’t let them kill the dream you dreamed. We not only have to continue to hope, but we have to bring hope into the world. We have to keep dreaming. We have to carry the fire. We have to not only keep others warm but help them light their own fires.

“Virtue” can seem old-fashioned. In fact, virtue—arete—translates to something very simple and very timeless: Excellence. Moral. Physical. Mental.

“The phrase ‘I am not responsible’ has become a standard response in our society to complaints of a job poorly done,” Admiral Rickover once pointed out. “This response is a semantic error. Generally what a person means is, ‘I cannot be held legally liable.’ Yet, from a moral or ethical point of view the person who declaims responsibility is correct

One aim: to help you choose… Courage, bravery, endurance, fortitude, honor, sacrifice… Temperance, self-control, moderation, composure, balance… Justice, fairness, service, fellowship, goodness, kindness… Wisdom, knowledge, education, truth, self-reflection, peace…

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world,” James Baldwin wrote, “and then you read.” It was books, history, philosophy, Baldwin said, that taught him that “the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”

But Rickover was also just a regular human being, someone with a temper, someone with colleagues and subordinates, a spouse, a son, parents, neighbors, bills to pay, traffic to navigate. What guided him, what he spoke about repeatedly in speeches and briefings, was the importance of this idea of a sense of right and wrong, a sense of duty and honor