"The time is always right to do what is right."
- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I would say "Enough said!" for this quote, but I feel like writing today so I'll elaborate.
Yes, it is always the right time to do the right thing... I guess you can call this a "moral" choice. I'd also factor in that the time is always now, so at every given moment it is our privilege to virtuously do what is right. It is actually advantageous for us to this because it affirms our enlightened nature and it causes the collective conscientious to be raised. I've never fancied myself as a philosopher, but today seems to be the right time for me to think philosphically. Who'd a thunk it!
When I was younger, and a cashier would mistakenly give me back more change, I thought it was my bounty. Nowadays, and I don't remember when I started doing so, I let cashiers know that they've given me back too much money and, additionally, tell them if they didn't charge me for an item. This act seems so minute, but it does have greater ramifications. When the cashier who made this type of mistake ends his/her shift, they close out their till and count the cash in the drawer. Employers may just dock the cashier's pay. Is this really fair, if I realize the error and say nothing to right the situation? I don't think so, which is why I choose to give back the excess money.
That is just one example, but I think it does illustrate my point. Besides, if we let the little things like this slide, how prone are we to sell ourselves short on even bigger opportunities to do the right thing. As Thoreau said, "Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep." How many of us are "sleeping" through life... not living to our fullest capacity or striving to actualize our potential? As Henry David Thoreau put it, "The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life." I, for one, cannot afford to sleep during my waking hours... life is way too precious.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Thoreau's Walden:
"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, butIsn't this further elaboration of what Dr. King has so eloquently and succinctly said?
by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our
soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable
ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to
be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a
few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very
atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect
the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make
his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated
and critical hour."
