My great-uncle was Herbert Agar; his sister was my grandmother. In a recent family Zoom, my uncle Jack (not Herbert, who is dead and was a great-uncle) explained how my grandmother had cut off her brother, Herbert, after he behaved badly with wife #1. My uncle made a passing comment about my grandmother having strict standards, and that resulted in an interesting family conversation about my grandmother, who died before I was five.
This is all related to dogs!
Apparently, this propensity to expect people to follow the forking rules/laws and do the right thing and so on and so forth is genetic. I am, therefore, unable to change this aspect of myself because it is in my DNA — like my blue eyes.
Pozy
Should I cover my blue eyes because they make people squirm? Of course not. Why then, should I be anything other than who and what I am in the face of bad behavior?
Pozy
Ah — but what is bad behavior, you ask. And who gets to decide? Fair questions and ones that I think about a lot, as someone incapable of seeing injustice and being quiet about it.
Capella and Starry
Is it a rule or a law? Then breaking it is bad behavior. If you don’t like the rule or law, work to change it. The moral tapestry of a community disintegrates one pulled thread at a time.
Capella and Starry
Does said behavior allow an individual to gain advantage over other people who follow the rules or law? If the answer is yes — bad behavior.
It is against the rules, for example, to do certain surgeries on a dog and then show him. A person who does that has broken the rules and gained advantage by doing so — double bad.
Capella and Starry
A third test of whether said behavior is bad is whether we prefer it not be known by others. If we would be embarrassed or upset that our behavior was widely known — easy peasy. Don’t do it.
Capella and Starry
Related to number three — if there are attempts to shoot the messenger, we should all just assume the messenger is on point.
Starry, seven months
It would take a lot for me to cut off a family member or friend and so maybe I am not exactly like my grandmother in that regard. But it is always so disappointing — and sad — to discover trust and respect has been misplaced.
From the whiteboard
And it is also just such a loss. For everyone.
💔
