You see something. You weren’t meant to see it. But as chance would have it, what happened makes your stomach drop and your eyebrows move up in an arch, adding an instant wrinkle in the middle of your forehead. And you say to yourself, I can’t believe what I am seeing. And now you are stuck with information; something you weren’t meant to see, but now it is rolling around in your head, doing flip-flops.
What do you do? With this information, you are placed in a dilemma. You have two choices, either (a) to keep your mouth shut or (b) tell the wronged party what you witnessed. Your brain is hurting even though the outcome has no bearing on your life or your relationships. Should you act on this information? Should you tell the wronged party what happened? The rational part of your brain tells you to do nothing. It isn’t your business. You shouldn’t meddle.
The emotional part of your brain is on a see-saw. Going up and down and back and forth. Clearly what happened is wrong and the ethical part of you really wants to say something. But you can’t. You don’t know what happens behind those walls.
You remind yourself that people are flawed. They make mistakes. And unions aren’t perfect. They are ambiguous and lines are blurry. And you don’t know how these adults color their picture. They may prefer to go outside of the lines.
You return to your life, squashing what you witnessed. You move about your day. You will immerse yourself in your life. In the end, you convince yourself to forget what you saw, even saying to yourself that maybe you are just imagining things, even though you know you are feeding lies to your own conscience.
Because it isn’t your place. There may be more to it. There are so many ambiguities and questions.
You do nothing.
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How do you handle ethical dilemmas? Do you do something about them? Or do you move about your own life, convincing yourself it is not your business? Have you witnessed something you shouldn’t have seen? What was your reaction?
***Image by Alanna@VanIsle
Welcome! I am a lawyer turned freelance writer, essayist, and editor. On staff at Literary Mama and the co-founder and co-editor of the literary journal, The Sunlight Press, my essays and reported work have appeared in The Washington Post, The Lily, Saveur, Civil Eats, Brain, Child, ESPN and elsewhere. I am currently at work on a memoir on grief and culture and how it provides perspective on life’s ordinary graces. I invite you to appreciate the ordinary with me. I hope my daily practice of seeing the magic in the mundane helps you celebrate and find more of these moments in your life too.
This happened to me this past weekend, with friends. Someone said something unkind to his spouse. We all walked away discussing the incident in disbelief, but no one felt it was in their place to say anything. His wife didn’t seem to mind. Or maybe she’s used to it. Or she didn’t want to show us how she it really affected her.
We all felt bad and knew it was wrong. Yet no one said anything to him. You’re right – “You remind yourself that people are flawed. They make mistakes. And unions aren’t perfect.”
But still… It’s a tough issue.
I’m so sorry, Rudri. That sucks. To me, carrying the weight of “information you weren’t meant to see” is one of the heaviest burdens. It’s really hard to do nothing. It’s such a helpless feeling.
(But your writing on it? So strong.)
That’s a tough situation. I probably wouldn’t have said anything, though, because it wouldn’t be my place. Though I might talk to the person who was doing whatever deed, because it is their place. Whatever direction it goes from there.
Every ethical dilemma is different, and we can’t possibly know the full context when we observe something – particularly if we catch a glance of something we weren’t meant to see.
Some things are clearer for me. A situation of theft, for example. Other situations are more murky – a “possible indiscretion” on the part of a married friend for instance. How do we know the circumstances? Or what happened before or after what we’ve seen? We don’t. We can’t possibly. We don’t have a full picture.
It’s terrible to carry information you don’t want. And impossible to know if you should spill or not. My own tendency is to err on the side of caution, keeping knowledge to myself, since I don’t know it’s context.
I was in a similar situation years ago. I also chose ‘to do nothing’. And, fittingly enough, the situation eventually worked itself on its own (read: the woman learned about her fiancé’s infidelity without my involvement, left him, and found happiness with another man). It took a few years, but my conscience eventually got the reprieve it was looking for.
Oh you always do it, bring up the tough topics and set me thinking. It is always hard looking in from the outside and difficult to judge what is and is not reality for others and what they do and do not already know and perhaps tolerate for example from a partner. I knew one couple for many, many years, friends with both husband and wife and for the longest time had no idea that the husband was a complete philanderer. He did it all very discretely but over time word got around and when I found out about it all from various colleagues and pieced it all together what had been going on all those years I was horrified. I felt unable to say anything to his wife because as both of them were my friends it would have been a betrayal. In the end my husband and I walked away from a very good friendship with both of them because of this. It is a very difficult line to cross, to interfere knowing not what the repercussions might be and when children are also involved, as in this case, it makes it all the harder. I was pretty sure that the wife knew of some of this at least and felt that by interfering and bringing it all out into the open I might force her hand so to speak. So yes, I said nothing.
There are no wrong or right answers, only different levels of comfort. To me it depends on the people, and the nature of your relationship with them. That’s what would tip the balance for me. I’m so sorry you are in this position, it’s tough. My best advice, go with your gut. It usually doesn’t stear us wrong.
On the one hand, no one wants to be the one who gets it wrong, who makes a huge deal out of something they simply don’t understand. On the other hand, no one wants to know their friend could’ve saved them some heartbreak and didn’t for fear of rocking the boat.
And so all I can say is that I would want to know, if only to rectify any misunderstandings. And so I hope someone would tell me and that they’d appreciate me doing the same.
I’m thankful I’ve yet to find myself in this situation but hate that you have. As I read, my instinct was to tell you to say something, but the comments had me questioning that until I got to Kelly’s. She said exactly what I was thinking: “I hope someone would tell me and that they’d appreciate me doing the same.” So, so tough.
Context plays such a huge role in this. And how close you are with those involved. After reading the comments, I am left feeling dark inside. For not saying something. I assumed a friend knew what everyone else was talking about. How much worse that was for her to be the last to know. But I don’t know if I could have done it differently.
This is a terrible place to be. Each situation is different due to circumstances of actual event and relationship to that person and has to be dealt with accordingly or ignored. So sorry you’ve been put in such a situation.
I have no idea. I have thought about this scenario many times, but each time I’m conflicted. For example, if I found out a friend’s child is sexually active, do I tell her? I know I’d appreciate if someone gave me the heads up, but, on the other hand, what if they know? What if they blow up at me and shun me (which happened to my mother)?
Tough situation. No answers here.
It’s so easy to recognize the “right thing to do.” But so hard to execute it. (Hugs and strength to you, dear friend.)
I’m afraid I’ve always tended to be the ‘charge hell with a bucket of water’ type when I come across injustice. Nowadays I’m far more wary of getting involved, laregly because people are so quick to resort to violence as a reaction to what they see as interference.
Life is not, in any case, made up of black and white but is instead a whole series of grey areas. Years ago my best friend had no idea that her long term partner was cheating on her. It was a real dilemma, wondering whether I should tell her. In the end I didn’t because I feared, as the bearer of bad news, that I would be out of her life from then on and I reasoned that it was better to be there when she eventually found out and was hurting.
There is no answer therefore, you just have to weigh up each situation, think what you’d want as the victim and follow your heart.