B is for Bad

Bad is one of the dozen or so words Toby, our 13 year old golden retriever, knows.  It was a word we never had to teach.  He knew it well by the age of one and a half when we acquired him fro the Westbrook Animal Refuge League.  (Other B-words is his vocabulary:  bath, bone, and boots)

As I understand is the way of his breed, our Toby's most ardent desire was to please his people.  We never needed corporal punishment to deter him from any behavior we didn't like - a couple of applications of the B-word was lash enough.  He would lower his head guiltily just as though he had been hit.  Then a few minutes later he would come lean up against your leg, trying desperately to re-ingratiate himself with affection.

Now, he is pretty much stone deaf.  He could no longer hear "bad dog", even if we ever felt he deserved such censure (which we wouldn't).  Of course he would still respond to the body language - the frowning glare and the wagging finger, but the word bad will never trouble him again.

I perhaps flatter myself to believe that as a boy I had a pretty much a golden retriever's aversion to be thought of as bad.  I was told the importance of being good, and I believed.  By the time I realized that there might be certain advantages to being perceived by my peers (especially those of the opposite sex) as being just a little bit bad, it was already too late for any convincing readjustment of my persona - I was pretty much stuck, at least in my own head, with being a good boy.

Not, of course, that I was incapable of bad behavior.  I certainly was guilty of plenty of that.  ML asked me the other day whether I ever thought back with regret on any relationships I had ended.  I agreed that I certainly did - that I know I was not just dishonest, but positively cruel to at least a couple of women who did not deserve it.  But, back then, I still felt comfortable thinking of myself as basically 'good' at some core that was above and beyond any temporary lapses.

Now that I, too, am getting old, I have acquired a certain deafness myself, a moral relativism.   Rather than weakness, though, I find it a strength.  Not that I believe I can't distinguish between good and bad behavior, in either myself or others.  But looking to judge people as good or bad with absolute moral authority is, to me, horribly diminishing.  Some will judge me for saying that, but I will not hear them...