There are moments that put one’s integrity to the test. They aren’t necessarily to be ranked higher than the everyday moments that only require one to keep on keeping on.

In first youth, one dreams of deeds of heroic daring elevating one to a place among the constellations of the night sky. But … after a few hits and misses in that genre, one comes to realize that sometimes it takes a heroic effort just … 

not to be crazy

and not to go crazy.

The name of that realization is “adulthood” and it should be celebrated more than ordinarily it has been. Living normally – as close to a balanced life as one’s immediate surroundings will allow – is quite heroic enough.

In that context, where one has outgrown the yearning for extremes, it can nevertheless happen that one gets called upon to act heroically. Should it come, the call will be quite unwelcome. One’s first instinct will be to look around to see if anyone else – perhaps someone standing nearer to the scene or better qualified than oneself – can take the call. 

Yes? No? 

Anyone here to answer the call?

Often the only answer will be a resounding silence. Sometimes the matter that’s come to one’s attention is confidential. In that case, persons not directly within reach should not be involved. Perhaps the situation is an urgent one, where time is of the essence. In that case, the response can’t wait for a canvass of all the possible candidates, to find the one best suited for this heroic act. Done well or badly, it must be done now. It cannot wait.

Oddly, I’ve more than once been on the receiving end of such a call. For instance (and this story is told in the last chapter of my book, A Good Look at Evil), on the day before an important vote was to be taken regarding who would become the chair of our philosophy department, my teaching hour was evaluated by a powerful member of the department. A negative evaluation would be grounds for getting fired so his writeup would make a significant career difference for me. Well, after observing my teaching performance, my senior colleague invited me to join him for tea at a nearby eatery. As we took our seats, I asked him whether he was here to lobby me about the next day’s vote. He said no, meanwhile noting how unfortunate it was that some of the junior colleagues were making negative comments about his preferred candidate. I replied that I too didn’t think much of his candidate, and explained why.

     “Well, if he’s as bad as you say he is, how do you explain a man like me supporting him?”

And all of a sudden, there it was: 

the summons.

Had he asked me the very same question – on any other occasion – I would of course have come up with some polite evasion or other. But precisely because he had my unwritten evaluation in his hip pocket, and was asking me on the day before the vote for chair, his question assumed the shape of a direct challenge to my integrity. It could not be dodged.

     “Since I’ve read your very intelligent articles, I can’t explain it, except on the supposition that he’s weak and you think you can use him.”

Okay, my answer would account for the next seven years of getting fired, fighting to get my job back, and getting fired again. So that particular ticket to integrity was a high-priced item. They usually are.

One time, a young cousin confided to me that she had been sexually abused by her father. Of course, she could have been making it up. But she was old enough, sufficiently achieved and otherwise reasonable, not to require bizarre attention of that kind. In any case, and most reluctantly, knowing him and what he’d been through, I did believe her. What she told me had the ring of truth. I did not think she was lying.

But her confidence was the last thing I wanted to hear. I loved her father. He and his wife had welcomed me and given me precious hospitality. They were my foothold in a country I held dear. He had been in about five wars and been multiply honored for outstanding service. You don’t come out of five wars looking like Paul Newman in “Exodus” with only a suntan to show for it. The war wounds had taken their toll on his personality. Yet his daughter’s claim was to me undeniable.

So I wrote her father and his equally-dear wife, laying out what I’d been told, adding that, if her allegations were true, they owed their daughter an admission of the truth and some expression of regret and remorse.

Of course, I did not expect to hear from them again and I never did. That connection – and all that came with it – was lost to me. But in writing that letter, I did what I could for them.

So what is the moral of these stories – so painful, so unwelcome, and so unmistakably carrying my name on each one?

Sometimes ordinary life, which proceeds on its horizontal, earth-bound track, one foot stepping in front of the other, stops short. Suddenly, the vertical dimension, that goes between hell and heaven’s high places, shows up. At that moment, 

the choice you make

is of a different kind.

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