People say the darndest things…

Two quick quotes – one next to the other in this Sunday’s New York Times to remind us of just how differently people see what is “right.”

 

“I was making a crazy amount of money and not even pitching. Honestly, I didn’t feel like I deserved it.” from Gil Meche, an injured pitcher for the Kansas City Royals who gave up his 12 million dollar guaranteed contract for 2011 and retired. Is this man a hero, simply honest, or a chump?

 

“The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done.” from a report by a Federal panel concluding that the financial crisis was an avoidable disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate management and heedless risk taking by Wall Street. The words regulation, management and taking could be regulators, managers and takers. It was people – not papers – that acted. Some of the “smartest” men and women in the world were seemingly not able to see what was RIGHT – no pun intended – in front on them, created by their own actions and inactions…

 

Sometimes “everybody” is really nobody. Sometimes one person’s actions can ignite the moral imagination of a nation, a town, an organization or simply one other person.