Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.
—Marcus Aurelius
In the beautiful and hilarious novel A Man Called Ove, a young Ove is working at the same rail yard as his father. He is cleaning a car with another worker, Tom, when they find a briefcase left by a passenger. Instinctively, Tom goes to steal it. Ove is surprised. A few seconds later, he finds and picks up a wallet left by a different passenger.
Just then, Ove’s father walks in. He asks Ove what he wants to do with the wallet. Ove suggests that they return it to the lost and found, where it is quickly claimed by the woman who lost it. “Not many people have ever handed in this much money,” the woman says. Well, Ove’s father replies, “many people don’t have any decency either.” Later that evening, Ove asks his father why he didn’t tell management about the briefcase that Tom had stolen. His father shakes his head and replies, “We’re not the sort of people who tell tales about what others do.”
In both instances, Ove’s father is showing his boy what decency looks like. Decency is about what you do. It’s not a standard you hold others to. Decency is what you do with money you find. It’s how you raise your kids. It’s not something you wield; it’s not something you gossip about. It’s something you embody and embrace.