Doing The Right Thing

Earlier this week, I was standing at the counter of my local Starbucks waiting on my black iced coffee with four pumps of simple syrup – I’m a simple man with simple fancies – when I chanced to glance outside. I saw a man walking away from the back of a car, he was wobbling a bit, and I noticed a spilled fluid behind the car.

My initial impression was that this was a leftover drunk from the night before who had just broken a beer bottle or vomited and was now on his way to be a general nuisance elsewhere.

In my defense, this impression wasn’t unfounded (even though it was, in the end, wrong) – the West Jesmond area of Newcastle is heavy with students (who are well-known for partying) and a small but very visible homeless population (who are known for rabble rousing on exactly the corner I saw this man walking away from).

I looked a bit closer at the spill on the ground and noticed, in the middle of it was a plastic lid. “Ah,” I thought, “he hasn’t broken a beer bottle or vomited, he’s dropped his drink. He’s now disposing of the cup in the bin just out of sight around the corner.”

This made much more sense as an impression since, upon first entering the cafe, I had noticed the same man sitting on the patio enjoying a drink – a realization I didn’t have as quickly as I formed my impression (false impressions can really sneak up on us!).

I scolded myself for having thought poorly of the man before having more information, and then turned my attention back to my yet-to-be-completed drink.

As I waited, I noticed the same man walking toward the cafe. I noticed, also, that he had a strange stride. In most cases, when a person walks, their arms swing in unison with the opposite leg. For this man, that wasn’t the case — only one arm was swinging while the other seemed pinned to his side. “Oh goodness, he’s disabled,” I thought, “no wonder he dropped the drink. Fuck. That must be frustrating for him. I bet he’s coming to order another.”

Sure enough, that’s exactly what he was doing.

He walked in and up to the register. And this is when I started feeling a bit of moral panic.

He didn’t mention his spilled drink. He just ordered another one.

This took me aback. The man was known to the cashier, that was clear. Perhaps not a regular, but someone who had been to this Starbucks before. Clearly the cashier would have known of his disability, and this was more and more cemented in my mind as the man fumbled with one hand to present his tap-to-pay method.

“Why wasn’t he telling them he dropped the drink? Surely the cashier would understand why, without it needing to be communicated verbally, and would offer to comp the second drink instead of putting this guy out another £5.”

Of course, the barista could not have known what I knew, because they didn’t see what I saw. For them, this was a normal occurrence: a customer ordering a second drink before leaving to go about the rest of their day – I do it almost every day.

I, on the other hand, felt an almost irresistible urge to intervene in the transaction and pay for the man’s drink.

But I didn’t.

I was trying to process too much information at one time. Namely, while I knew the choice and action to pay for the man’s drink would have been kind, I couldn’t, in a fast enough manner, determine if it would be appropriate to do.

What if this man were the sort that would feel uncomfortable being pitied by a stranger?

What if this guy’s whole life is full of people saying, “Oh poor you,” and it’s the sort of thing he wishes would stop?

What if my intention, while seemingly just, is actually rooted in my “white knight” complex (and by “white” here, I’m not talking skin-tones, I’m talking shining armor coming to save the damsel, savior complex kind of stuff).

The man was at the register for no longer than a minute and my window to act passed.

I was so upset by my failure to make a choice that I immediately sat down to write this edition before any of the details got fuzzy.

I failed to choose and act because I was overthinking the scenario.

I’ve found that this is a constant difficulty for practicing Stoics…

Since we must examine our impressions carefully, so that we can make choices which align with Nature, with our roles, with our ideas of Justice, it is frequently the case that we are a bit behind the 8-ball in “fast” scenarios. We condition ourselves, in a very real way, to trust our minds over our sense impressions (gut feelings)… this is a core feature of Stoicism. We can’t not do it.

My gut feeling was to say, “Hey, let me get that. I saw you spilled your first one, let me get this one. It’ll put your day back on track instead of costing you another five quid.”

My second was that I would say, to the guy, with the clear intent of prompting the cashier, “I saw you spilled that first one, happens to me more than I’d like to admit.” The cashier would then, at least I hoped, think “okay, that sucks, this guy is already disabled, let’s give him a break, that’d be nice” and the drink would be comped.

But my concern for how my so-called charity would impact its target, tied me up in a series of mental exercises that prevented me from making a choice while I could.

I don’t have great advice here, but I do have a thought.

Had I just gone with my gut, I would have been choosing to abandon a core aspect of Stoic practice. Hypothetically, if I were a sage I could do that – because a sage, who has habituated virtuous choosing so completely, is incapable of making moral mistakes and would have a “virtuous gut.” I, however, am not a sage, so I can’t just “go with my gut” without working against my practice.

Despite this, I’m lamenting not going with my gut, and I’m rationalizing my inaction by rationalizing the Stoic process of assent: This guy having to confront his disability by way of a fumbled coffee, and being out £5, is an indifferent.

But that kind of rationalizing of inaction is what gives Stoicism a bad name in contemporary society. Because it makes it seem like we’re concerned with the wrong thing – it makes it seem like the point of helping someone isn’t to help them, it is to put a gold star on our chest for acting appropriately, rationally, according to Nature, etc.

Additionally, I could have chosen to intervene and rationalized in the same way: Their impression of my intention is both out of my domain of choice and an indifferent. What matters is the moral rationale behind my choice, not the outcome of it.

But this kind of rationalizing of actions, are also part of what gives Stoicism a bad name in contemporary society. Because it feels very, “I don’t care what your opinions or feelings are, because they’re, in my view, unjustified.” If someone said to us, “You’re making me feel threatened” (for example), it wouldn’t be a very Stoic response to say “that’s your problem, I’m not threatening you.”

In Stoicism we strive to be careful in assenting to impressions (and, thus, making choices) because one bad choice is the trailhead of a many-forked path of poorer and poorer choices. We believe that our rational mind, our impressions, are the criterion of truth in the world. Since we believe this, the threat that false impressions (and the choices they lead us to) pose to us cannot be exaggerated.

We cannot choose not to care how others are impacted by our choices, because to do so would be antithetical to our desire to choose morally – it is not morally appropriate not to care about the impact of our choices.

This means we cannot do what feels right without first processing the emotion(s) of that feeling through a filter of reasoning. We must reason that our choices are the (contextually) morally appropriate choices before we make them.

To excuse ourselves from that responsibility would be to allow our emotions to rule our rational faculty, and this leads to an immoral and thoughtless life – it is a lazy way to live and to think. It is also a lazy way to consider our impact on the world.

I feel, in the end, that my choice to think through the situation, even though it prevented me from acting, was contextually appropriate for me, because it was a choice to reason through my choice carefully and, in a word: Stoically.

For the record, however, if I’d had another minute to go through the process, I believe I would have to say something along the lines of, “Do you mind if I get that for you? I’ve just reloaded my Starbucks app and want to make sure it works – I don’t need another drink myself.” Then put the ball in his court.

To defend that approach (if I have to): having had time to retrospect the situation and circumstances, I think the appropriate choice would have been to find a way to show some kindness without risking making the guy feel pitied. A little massaging of the truth, at least in this specific context, seems like it would have been the right choice.

I know I’ll get faster as I keep practicing, and so will you. Just remember to keep practicing. No one said practicing Stoicism was going to be easy.

Thanks for reading