Motive
October 18th, 2007
“The last temptation is the greatest treason, To do the right deed for the wrong reason.” — T.S. Eliot
When I was a teenager I was fascinated by this quote, by the notion that in the end, purity of motive made the difference between deed being good or not. It seemed clear that you were supposed to do the right thing because it was right, and at the same time everywhere there was this subtext of “Treat people the way you want to be treated (so they’ll treat you that way back)” or “Be nice so people like you.”
Here’s the problem, I cannot separate out the philosophical, the religious, and that which is just obligatory to satisfactory participation in relationship with another person. I struggle with generosity; I think I am a generous person, I certainly don’t say no sometimes when my husband wishes I would. But how does an act of generosity weigh when I realize that there were strings attached, whether I was hoping for reciprocation, gratitude or even acknowledgment? What about when it’s about sustaining a picture of myself within my own head? Has anything I’ve ever done really had a pure motive? Maybe my standard is my relationship with my kids, where I do stuff to make them happy because their being happy makes me happy, but that’s such an inherently asymmetrical relationship in terms of power and responsibility, that it’s hard to compare that to a friendship. And as a friend I am so happy to offer what I can, whether it’s picking up a child from school or picking up the check at dinner, and at the same time, so bad at asking for anything in return, that I kind of ignore the reciprocation aspect of it until things feel all screwed up.
It sometimes occurs to me that self-knowledge, awareness of all the envy and jealousy and insecurity and schadenfreude that pass through my head are just going to convince me I deserve only bad things, and that even incites fear that I try to be a better person not for the sake of goodness itself, but for the sake of resting comfortably within my own head. And as I parent towards helping my kids find the inherent reward and punishment in their own actions I still wonder if even this sort of reward and punishment taints our motives.
