Demanding your rights or using good judgment?

My mother used to tell me, "Just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you should do it." She tried to teach me at an early age that there is an important distinction between having the right to do something and making the decision about whether or not it is the right thing to do. It has become clear that, in our zeal to demand and ensure our rights and our liberty, many of us grown-ups have forgotten this important distinction.

Confusion about this issue is plastered all over the headlines these days. A Muslim faith community has the right to build a community center two blocks from Ground Zero, yet they can't seem to understand that it might not be the right thing to do. A Christian preacher threatens to burn the Koran and it takes him a while to understand the impact of his potential actions on others. Sure, he has a right to do it, but should he? A majority in Congress (regardless of party) pushes laws through like a bull in a china shop, ignoring the protests of other members of Congress and a large portion of the public. Yes, they have a right to do this, but is it in the best interest of the country?

And it's not just people on the public stage who seem to be confused about this. I struggle with it in my daily life, too. I have the right to demand certain rights and accommodations for my son at school, and I can make some people's lives pretty miserable as I do it. But should I? Is it in the best interest of my son? Is alienating the educators who will be working with him every day the best way to get him what he needs? As an employer, I have the right to fire employees who are late to work, who don't follow my directives as they should, or who make careless mistakes, but aren't there more benefits to be gained from helping people to become good employees than from letting them go just because they don't "toe the line?" It's not an easy decision. Sure, I have the right to let them go, but there are many things to consider in making the decision about whether or not that is the right thing to do.

It seems that we have become very good at flexing our muscles to demand our rights while we are losing our ability to discern right from wrong. And I'm not just talking about when right and wrong are black and white because it's hardest to use good judgment when right and wrong are surrounded by 1 million shades of gray and other peoples' rights come into the picture.

I think it's time for all of us to take a step back and focus less on our own rights and more on the rights of others and making good decisions (judgments) about the right thing to do in each situation. This becomes easier when we try to focus on the needs of others, rather than our own needs. A world in which everyone is standing angrily shaking their fists demanding their own rights while others suffer is not the kind of world I want to live in whether the "world" is the national or international stage, my workplace, my community, or my home.

Most of us (and certainly, just about anyone who is reading this) have been blessed with great abundance. How would our world be different if, instead of focusing on demanding our rights, we focused on expressing our gratitude for that abundance daily by reaching out to others, trying to understand their point of view and their needs, asking the Almighty for guidance, and making good judgments about how to proceed based on what's right rather than how we can keep what we have and get more?

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