Susan Thom

"Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide."


Posted: Saturday, June 09, 2007

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You’re twelve years old. You’ve just been told to share the chocolate chip cookies with your sister. Mom goes into the kitchen, and although we know we weren’t supposed to do it, we scoffed down the rest of the plate of cookies. Our sister cries, mom yells, we get punished, but those cookies were worth it. Is that where we learn how to turn off our inner voice? For the instant gratification of a situation, or a circumstance? Do we accept the good feeling of eating those cookies, while rejecting that voice in our gut trying to get us to behave, and do the right thing?

Is this going to be a long lasting character trait? Will the cookies become our neighbor’s diamond ring, or our grandmother’s brooch to pawn for money to have a good time, and treat all our friends, and have them like us, making us feel good? Will the cookies be our co worker who has been flattering us for months, and the Christmas party comes, and even though our wife or husband is at home with the baby, those cookies look too damn good? You have a little one night fling on the outside deck. Your desire for that instant gratification, and your inability to calm that urge, has now ended in you cheating on your wife, or husband. Why will one person go home, and one stay with the plate of cookies?

Is it learned behavior? Witnessing adults lie, cheat and steal, while growing up and trying to make sense of right and wrong? How about seeing loving, caring parents who would die for each other? Does it make a difference? Can the child who has the loving parents grow up to lie, cheat, and steal, and the child with lying, cheating, stealing parents grow up to be model citizens? Of course they can, so where then lies the difference? Is it a chip in our heads we’re born with, or a programming of our heart from a Higher Being? Is it the ability to choose for one’s self what is best for their happiness and well-being?

I feel like there is a force greater and more powerful than myself, pulling for me to succeed. Guiding me, nudging me, grooming me, allowing me to make the best decisions. Allowing, not forcing. Only I have the power over what I act and react to, and in what manner. What about conscience? What role in good and evil does conscience play? Do we choose to listen to or tune out our conscious voice trying to warn us of impending danger? Is that our free choice? How many times do we say to ourselves, "I better not do that, the results won’t be favorable?" But we go ahead and do it anyway? And then, of course, we have to pay the consequences. Those repercussions are sometimes harsh. They could result in jail, broken relationships, and children growing up emulating inappropriate behavior.

So how do we train ourselves to pick the right path? Make the right decisions? Stay on the side of good? Do we start with one thing, feel the rewards, enjoy the feelings, and try to repeat it over again? What about the bad decisions? Do we feel a rush of adrenaline we can’t find doing anything else, and that makes us feel good? Do we feel a sense of power when we overtake someone else, or steal something from them without them knowing it? Do we like the power of being in control in a rape? Were we controlled as a child? Do we like to feel clever that we pulled off a robbery? Does it make us feel smart, when all through school others called us dumb? Did we have a fantastic childhood, surrounded by nature, loving parents, and one day simply decide to rob a car? Just to feel a thrill we were never allowed to feel?

So many reasons for so many people choosing between right and wrong. And not even realizing that their brains are talking to them as they prepare for either action. And yet others can’t get the thoughts out of their mind. Kind of a mystery. Or, just an individual combination of occurrences and experiences in one’s life? Is that what makes the world go around? Different strokes for different folks? Too boring if everyone were the same? Good versus evil? Calm versus the storm? Good trying to change evil? Evil trying to change good? Good trying to stay good, evil trying to stay evil?

I think the positive energy we get when we do something good, something nice for someone, is a driving force to do so. And as we experience this positive energy, we share it with those we come in contact with, as well as nature itself.

The negative energy we get when we do something wrong, or inappropriate, or immoral, should let us know that we might want to think about making some better choices, and listening to that voice inside our head. "Let your conscience be your guide."

Susan Thom is the mother of three children, two sons, 20 and 23, and a daughter 25. Her older son is in the air force in Germany right now, and her daughter is in the army in Tacoma, Washington.

Writing calms her, and gives her a place to go by herself! Clears the head and gets it out. She lives in a rural area, with a lake and mountains, and her partner, and has loved writing since she was a child.

She has been on a journey of self discovery for twenty years, and has learned many things about the human mind, and how to maintain some semblance of calm and peace within.

If someone reads one of her stories, and relates to her feelings, and gets a suggestion on how she dealt with them in a positive way, that would be the ultimate gift of her writing.

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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)
» left by David Tanguay
 4 years 244 days ago.
"Let your conscience be your guide." Yes I believe it could work for everyone Susan, but some people have their own way of justifying the bad things they do in life so they can make themselves believe they are right with their evil doing.
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» left by Mary Fagan
 4 years 244 days ago.
59 fans. Follow Mary Fagan on twitter!
As silly as it sounds, I remember the voice of Jiminy Cricket singing "Always let your conscience be your guide" that I head as a kid on the Walt Disney (or maybe the Musketeers) show. It left an impression on me. It reminds me that the things we teach our children really do have impact - one that can last a lifetime. Thanks for the thoughtful article.
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