I was raised by people who had a lot of what we called “common sense.” And there was a strict integrity attached to that. We did unto others as we wanted them to do unto us.
My most vivid, early memory of clear virtue involved my mother. It was in 1955 or so. We went through the drive-up window at the bank where she deposited a check and got some money back. As was her habit, she pulled over in the parking lot after we left the window and counted the money and checked her receipt to make sure it was correct. It wasn’t. The teller had given her an extra $200. According to the inflation calculator at DollarTimes, that’s $1617.60 in today’s money.
I was thrilled! I had never seen so much money at one time and at 7 years old I didn’t entirely understand the mechanism of banking. I thought the bank just gave us money and this was a bonus gift and said something like, “Yippee!” My mother said no, we had to get back in line and give the money back to the lady at the window. I didn’t understand why and said so and my mom said that the poor girl would have to make it up out of her paycheck and that would be very sad and hard for her . . . and, simply, that it wasn’t our money.
So she drove the car back into the line and we waited patiently for our return to the window.
The connection between what Aristotle called “Practical Wisdom” and what we think of as “Virtue” is clean and simple. And with the way things are these days . . . it’s always inspiring to hear about people who use their heads for more than hat racks and their hearts for more than blood pumps.
