Do The Right Thing

"Do the right thing."

You hear people say it. Many times they say it about young people. "Why can't they just do the right thing?" They say it about wealthy businessmen. They say it about politicians. "Just do the right thing."

We forget that the "right thing" must be taught, and it must be taught at a young age or it will not stick, it will not be learned. The "right thing" is a way of life that is passed from one generation to the next, and then to the next, and so on, like the links of a chain. And if the chain is broken, the "right thing" becomes lost, becomes forgotten. It's like a secret recipe that is handed down from grandmother to mother to daughter, from grandfather to father to son, and if someone along the way doesn't hand that recipe down to the next generation, then it's not learned and it becomes forgotten. It becomes lost. And then people will behave as if there never was a right way to behave. They will do things that would be unthinkable to an earlier generation.

Many Americans today have forgotten that there is a right path and that there is a wrong path. A student gets angry at a classmate so he goes to school with a gun and shoots the source of his anger. In doing so, a number of innocent people may be shot: classmates and teachers. It happens because somebody did not learn that there is a right way and a wrong way to live and behave. Somebody didn't learn that, in the end, there is always be a price to be paid.