Ted Kennedy and doing what you should do
“…and that is that health care is a moral issue.”
I spent a good deal of this weekend suddenly sad, and in trying to explain it to my wife, one of the things I lingered on was a dissatisfaction with how well I do things I know I should do.
The quote above is from Ted Kennedy’s memoir, written as he thinks back on his time spent in a Boston hospital convalescing from a broken back, when he realizes that the average person is an illness or accident away from utter ruin. I cite the quote because it exemplifies Kennedy’s ability to do what he should do. He sees a moral issue to address, and he therefore spends the next forty years addressing it.
Most of us though are like me. If we’re not lazy, then we’re at least in search of comfort to displace discomfort, driven not by a roaring fire but by warm gray coals, ones we stoke every so often, the kind of fuel that gets us through the day and the years but can’t power our souls to do all the things we should do.
It’s always troubled me. Most of us do just enough to get by, but why don’t I do more? Why is my capacity for personal comfort larger than my capacity for moral action? I have little to lose by working a bit harder, reading more books again, getting up early on a Saturday to volunteer, calling old friends more often. Why does that simple motivation fail me and most of us?
It’s a related issue that permeates Kennedy’s memoir, in the words of his father Joseph: you’re either going to live a serious and productive life, or you’re not, and if it’s the latter, know that I’ll love you all the same but I won’t have much time for you. Ted Kennedy had many opportunities to live a comfortable life but always ran up against his father’s—let’s face it—threat that if he’s not going to choose to face the harder things life has to offer, then he’s out of his father’s life.
Is that what it takes before people always do what they should do?
