© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete 2005 revised text of Building Yourself, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's guide to living the successful life.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Building Yourself Table of Contents
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• There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. George Santayana (1863–1952)

To say that you make morality sounds rather harsh and arbitrary, but it's really not. At first glance, if you create your own morality, you can do almost anything and feel no remorse about it. You don't want to go around robbing and killing people, you say. Well, that's precisely the point. You might think you respect the integrity and personal space of other people because society told you to, but in reality you do the right thing because you've made your own decisions about what is right and wrong.

The key, then, is that you can't escape thinking for yourself and deciding for yourself about right and wrong. The fact that you value yourself brings you to respect the rights and space of others.

If you base your behavior on commandments, laws or customs handed down by others—which you follow by rote—you're not being moral. You don't exercise free choice or free thought on the question of right or wrong. You listen to others and make no decisions for yourself. In a situation like this, you can easily be convinced to do anything the authority wants you to, and feel no shame, guilt or remorse. Soldiers are convinced to kill each other by the thousands on this basis. On the other hand, if you do things that are contrary to the authority but which hurt no one, your conditioning may make you feel unnecessary guilt and shame.

If you find a person's wallet on the street—and it's filled with money—of course you return it. If you're returning it only because you'd sweat with guilt for taking someone else's money, your motivations are very poorly founded. Guilt is a useless emotion. You've found something that belongs to someone else. Why would you want something that belongs to someone else? Your whole personal philosophy involves earning money, exchanging your work and your genius for value. Getting something for nothing? The notion is foreign to you. You feel fortunate that you found the money instead of someone who would keep it without giving anything in return. You've also spared some poor, guilt-driven person the agony of wrestling with their confused conscience before they decide to return the money.

As you make your way in society, it's vitally important for you to chew on the major moral questions yourself, freely, rigorously, and realistically. The easy-way-outs of blindly accepting outside moral authority or of rejecting morality entirely are simply not acceptable to a person of integrity. You need to make a commitment to live at a high level of personal integrity. Your conscience, the right and wrong center in your mind, must remain active. It has to. There are a lot of issues more important than what to do if you find a lost wallet.