What if Everyone Was Honest?

Ever stop to think about how different our lives would be if everyone was honest?

I used to contemplate this when I lived in Italy. To be more precise, I lived in Monza, a fairly posh suburb of Milan. My apartment was on the edge of a massive park that surrounded the palace of a former king. It was an upscale neighborhood with not much evidence of crime or violence. Which is why the security protocol for "going home" always struck me as excessive and got me started thinking about how "dishonesty" impacts our lives.

For perspective, to get into my very own apartment, I needed an electronic key to open a gate at the roadside so that I could advance to the guard shack where a human security officer required me to show identification. Every time. Day after day, week after week... for four years. 

Then I could pull forward into our underground structure to my locked garage. Of course, I needed another key to enter the lobby of my apartment building, a code to activate the elevator, and 3 separate keys for the 3 separate locks on my door. I remember joking to my friends that the greatest criminal masterminds in the world couldn't steal my TV. (Of course, my apartment was ransacked during an overnight ski trip about a month after I moved in, but that's the topic for a whole other blog post).

My point is that remembering, planning, and adhering to all of the "honesty protocols" required to go home each night, summed up to a lot of effort over time. Add that to the protocols for starting and securing my own vehicle, getting into my office, starting my computer, opening my email, boarding a flight, crossing a border, cashing a check or taking money from an ATM (all things I did daily, weekly, or at least monthly in those days), and you realize that we all spend enormous amounts of time and effort to protect ourselves against dishonesty.

But imagine a world where no one took what did not belong to them, and no one accessed information that they didn't have the right to access, and no one misrepresented their identity. No one would need a key for their car, or their house, or any other protected asset. In fact, keys never would have been invented. Nor would have locks. Not even invented!

Ditto for passwords. And for copyright laws. And tamper proof packaging (man, I hate tamper proof packaging!). Scalpers would only sell real tickets, dating site photos would be un-retouched, and that used car you bought would really have passed a 31-point inspection.

What would we all do with so much free time and so little stress? To where would we re-channel all the energy we currently divert to protection against dishonesty? How much more open to policies of public assistance would we all be if we trusted the beneficiaries and knew that none were scamming the system and stealing our tax dollars? 

On the one hand, I understand how getting cheated or robbed can lead to reduced trust and increased vigilance against being wronged. On the other hand, I would like to believe that witnessing conspicuous honesty and integrity might reverse the trend. I am not so naive as to believe that trust can be built as quickly as it can be broken, but I think we would all love to live in a more honest world, and I am exactly naive enough to believe that building one is a goal worth striving for. 

Honesty breeds trust and fuels community. Deception and dishonesty spark defensiveness and self-protection. Let's not overlook all the honesty out there... even if it is not ubiquitously covered in the news, we need to notice it, appreciate it, and let it fill the general coffers of trust.

Bob Ring: One That Got Away

I am pretty lazy and pretty busy. Given that combination of trait and circumstance, you can imagine that there are not many people who could inspire me to do anything (even a fun thing), that I didn't plan and choose myself.

Fewer people still could inspire me to dig a ladder out from behind the clutter in my garage, climb the ladder, precariously shuffle heavy boxes across high shelves in search of a particular heavy box that contained thousands of old photos, and then spend the better part of a day looking for one specific shot. Bob Ring is one of the few. He inspired me.

He married my cousin when I was a kid and I honestly never knew him very well. But I know that I have three indelible memories of him. Given that I only met him about a dozen times in my life, that's a pretty good hit rate for laying down indelible memories. In my book, that makes him special. 

The first memory is of a day when he joined me and my brother for a round of golf during the summer after I graduated high school. My brother and I were beginners at the sport, but like all golfers, we lived for the occasional good shot when you could watch the ball sail high and far toward the target. I remember that Bob was having vision problems at the time and could not see the flight of his ball after striking it. I wondered how he could possibly enjoy golf if he couldn't see his ball.

His solution was that, after striking the ball, he would turn to observe our faces as we watched it sail away. He would interpret the quality of his shot from the vector of our collective gaze and the tone of our facial expressions. I remember being fascinated at how he held onto his love of golf even though his failing vision had presented a seemingly unassailable obstacle in his path. I don't remember any specific golf shot from that day; I only remember that Bob impressed me as a passionate person who simply would not be denied his fill of joy. I knew then that he was an innately positive person.

A more recent memory is depicted in the (hard to find and retrieve) photo above. I'm not sure why I have always remembered this moment, but it perfectly encapsulated Bob's self-deprecating sense of humor and his ability to make people laugh. His triumphant pose after landing this "lunker" (his description) epitomized his well-grounded character. There's an old saying that "people remember how you make them feel" and Bob always made me feel relaxed and happy. That's probably why I vividly remember this otherwise uneventful day.

And my most visceral memory is of the toast he gave at his eldest daughter's wedding. I don't remember the town, or the church, or even with whom I attended, but I clearly remember Bob's short and eloquent speech welcoming his son-in-law into the family. Coming from a man I had only ever known to behave in a light-hearted and jovial manner, the straight-forward sensitivity of his words struck me as exemplary. 

Bob died recently, a great catch that got away too soon; but I know he lives on prominently in the hearts and minds of those he inspired.