My ethical reflections
Pottery Stewart wrote: “Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.” I do not have trouble thinking of myself as an ethical person. I know it sounds too good to be true, too self-assured, and too naïve. At this stage of my life, I know who I am and where I stand as a woman, family member, friend, and business professional. Time, people, places, different circumstances, and diversity of experiences are the school in which we learn and realize that we are only imperfect mortal beings. Even if we push that thought away, we will fail by our own complications, shortcomings, and fragility.
Am I an ethical human being? After what I wrote, the answer should be yes, no, maybe, or at least, I feel like that, but in life, nothing is engraved in stone forever, without changing. Being ethical may also turn out to be a place none of us knows until we reach it because we imagine we know everything about ourselves while, in fact, we do not know the smallest fraction of what there is to know, we are even incapable of imagining the reality of life and moments that will define us. Following Confucius’s marvelous statement: “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand,” I believe that hearing and seeing about ethics is not enough but being in that moment when you have to make a conscious decision about your actions or others reflects what side are you standing at. However, the decisions are not dichotomously easy, white or black, linearly straightforward, soulfully clear; just the opposite, lots of shades of gray, complex, and sometimes emotionally dreadful. Only such moments crystalize us and determine our right-at-this-moment and future beliefs and behaviors.
For a big part of my life, I was convinced in my ability to control and direct events of my life. But I realized that some events would just happen and slide in front of me where I do not have clues, words, and answers. I just did not know how this or that was possible. Sometimes, the same happens when one considers being ethically appropriate in communicating, making decisions, and reinforcing actions.
How we perceive ethics and are receptive to differences of moral principles that govern individual’s behavior in a big measure depends on our upbringing, experiences, and events that have formed us like a bowl filling up moment by moment with experiences, adding up to the beginning of wisdom. Besides, our close ecosystem of family, friends, mentors, role models, and coworkers impacts and shapes our ethical awareness. I have a deep-seated family values coming from my Polish heritage. Since my childhood, my parents emphasized the importance of education, cultural heritage, dignity, work ethics and deep respect for the moral values fostered into my close surroundings of the family, uncles, aunts and cousins. It was normative at my home that my siblings and I would keep on just going, studying, working hard, and doing whatever we could to become exemplary members of family and society. My mother worked in the education system, so she experienced from a first-hand fruit of investment in moral values and education. My father, passionate about mechanics and electrical engineering, worked long hours to establish his company. My decision to step into a business world as an active player was influenced by him and relatives struggling to build own businesses in the difficult times of the communistic period in Poland. I always perceived that type of entrepreneurship as a way of personal and financial independence, of saying “no” to the prevailing communistic system of decay, corruption and mendaciousness, where the career and standard of living, in a big measure, depended on the ideological attitude rather than on the experience, education and good work ethics. My parents’ ingrained work ethics and life values laid the framework, substance and sense of responsibility for me because their life story became my life story and my foundation. And it has shaped me and my perspective on many things in life, and how I have perceived the world. They also showed me that I never should “wear a mask,” just be authentic and know my inner compass while doing what is right.
So, what is my role?
To find a way of contributing to the world where I think I can make a difference in an ethical way. To have courage to follow an unconventional path, to take responsibility for my own development and those around me, to build my business out of my life story, and to seek out in my professional life not a job, not a career, but a calling. To respect myself and others who are different from me. To continue to learn and be authentic wherever I am going, who I am, what is important for me.
Never give up on acting ethically.
Have fun in the meantime.
Joie de vivre!