Where Do We Find the Courage to Do What is Right?
“Here we are at the end of the century, drifting through a heroless age. We have no leaders we can trust, no visions to invest in, no faith to ride. All we have are our own protean moralities, our countless private codes, which we each shape and reshape according to our own selfish needs. We don’t dare to think too far ahead, we can’t see too far ahead. Here we are, trapped by whatever season we find ourselves enduring, waiting out the weather, staring at a drought sun, stupefied, helpless — or scrambling like fools to make it home before the rain really comes down and the dry river floods and the hills crash into the valley. Where do we find the courage to do what is right?”
From the novel “The Long Rain”, by American author Peter Gadol, published in 1997. Having been written over 20 years ago, one is struck by how eerily prescient this passage is particularly in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic. The novel explores how the protagonist confronts several moral dilemmas and the choices he makes and how they impact others. One of the key takeaways from the novel is that one of the most significant measures of success in life is based on the how people treat one another, evoking the wisdom of the Golden Rule.
