Note: In honor of Father’s Day, I am doing all pieces this month about my dad.

I’m no theologian, but I think that one trait of a virtuous person is a lack of hesitation when it comes to making good choices. The people I admire do the right thing with speed and directness — as though the wrong thing isn’t even an option. It’s bold and it’s heroic — think of the firefighter who plunges into the burning building to save someone. Think of that scene in Forrest Gump when he beats up the guy who hit Jenny at the Black Panther party. My dad, so far as I can tell, has this lack of hesitation in spades.

When my maternal grandmother was ailing and couldn’t live alone anymore, it was Dad’s idea that we build a room on the back of our house for her. He knew it would be expensive, and he didn’t know how long Grandma would stay or what that stay would entail. But it was done, and he never expressed an iota of concern about his convenience, wallet or anything else. Why does that stuff matter? he would have said, if we would have asked. It’s the right thing.

When our parish priest called in the middle of the night for help because there was a plumbing problem and the church was flooding, dad hotfooted it up there with a Well duh, it’s my church mindset. He and some other parishioners worked for hours to fix the problem. He batted away praise with that same Duh, what else would you do? mentality. To be sure, Dad’s hairtrigger decision-making trait bleeds into a frustrating tendency of saying unbelievably offensive, violent or politically incorrect things. But his actions speak louder.

This isn’t to say that he’s careless or overly impulsive. I talked to him on the phone a few days after the laziness of my brothers and sisters had elicited a scolding of Biblical proportions from Mom (Literally — she canceled Easter.). He was saying how one of them had left a dish in the sink nonetheless, and his first impulse was to throw it at the back of the offender’s head. “But I didn’t do my first impulse,” he said. “You never do things when you’re angry.” (Not that Dad ever would have actually thrown a dish at anyone’s head. Except a Democratic legislator, maybe.)

I’m also no sociologist, but I think that a lack of hesitation dwindling in my generation. A friend once said, “The fault of the human psyche is overanalysis.” I don’t know if it’s true, but if so, the world these days has that fault in spades. Many times I’ve on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-othered about a decision that, deep down, I knew was easy. Try thinking out loud about a decision, and see if your listener will give you an excuse to do the thing you feel like doing rather than the thing that’s right. As often as not, she will. I have.

This isn’t to say that thought should be banished from the decision-making process. Life is complicated, love is complicated, jobs and families and finances are all complicated. You can’t shoot first and ask questions later. I read the other day that a week’s worth of the New York Times has more information that the average person in the Middle Ages was exposed to in a lifetime. More information can mean better — although more complex — decisions. But in a world going grayer and grayer, there is some black and white left. And we could all learn a little from my Pops, who, when it comes to the right thing, doesn’t even let the wrong thing have a say.

One Response to “A lack of hesitation”

1. Jen Says:
   June 30th, 2009 at 10:02 am

   Well said. I couldn’t agree more!

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