As a general rule, having to wear eyeglasses is a tremendous hassle. Firstly, they are an additional expense — often a big one if you are vain like me and buy glasses not just based on their function but also because of their form. Secondly, they are magnets for smudges and it is such a pain to always have to wipe your glasses clean. Thirdly, glasses mist up whenever you leave an air-conditioned area and enter our naturally humid tropical climate. Fourthly, you always leave them lying around somewhere and you can’t seem to locate them when they are really needed. But despite all the trouble and inconvenience of my glasses, they help me to see things clearly. And that is what’s truly important.
I rant about wearing spectacles because I’ve only recently had to use them. It is a function of age. As a middle-aged man, time has truly caught up with me and in order to see properly, I have to put aside my pride and narcissism — particularly my pretensions of youthfulness — and don my eyeglasses. It was either that or suffer through migraines and driving at night with my high-beam headlights on all the time. Unlike many others whose eyeglasses seem almost an extension of their face or an aspect of their persona, since they’ve been using them for so long, I’m just getting used to wearing my glasses.
Now for the upside: I see things very clearly now. My doctor explained to me that the lens in my eye had, at least in my layman’s translation of it, some imperfections that made me see things out of focus, particularly my left eye. So after going through the process of finding the right grade — and something about curvature of the lens that I pretended to understand when my doctor was explaining it to me — I went to the optical shop to get my glasses. It will seem like hyperbole (it isn’t) but after getting the right prescription for my glasses, it appeared to me that my vision was upgraded to HD (high definition) levels. What differentiated my vision with glasses, as compared to my vision pre-glasses, was how much more vivid some of the colors appeared and the increased clarity of my sight.
Having a set of values and a code of ethics for your life is just like having a good set of eyeglasses. Your values and ethics will enable you to see your problems, your opportunities, and your challenges with much greater clarity and so you will be able to make wiser decisions. Not having a plain and unmistakable set of values and ethics will, like failing to get a proper prescription for your glasses, hamper your ability to see the issues that you confront, open you to being blindsided by problems that you will inevitably encounter, and will make decision-making difficult, if not nearly impossible, given that you do not have a value system to anchor your judgments on.
I’ve recently gone through a stretch where it seemed that I had lost my ethical eyeglasses — from 2008 to 2010, after I became a political spokesman and started to dabble in politics, which eventually led to the debacle of my run for the Senate in 2010, I lost my ethical focus. I began to think not in terms of being truthful and having integrity but in terms of what would improve my political opportunities. I became obsessed with my public image. I focused more of my time and energy on my career instead of my family. In short, I lost my way.
But if you lose your way, then you can, of course, correct yourself, change direction, and find your way again. For me, it meant re-finding my ethical lens — or spectacles — and removing the smudges and mist of self-conceit, greed and selfishness and rediscovering my core values: my love of family, my pride in my family name and history, my dedication to excellence, my belief in integrity, and, perhaps most importantly, my ability to laugh at my mistakes and realize what a jerk I had become.
Part of rediscovering my values has been to forswear politics, or more specifically the elective kind of politics, and re-focusing my energies on my family and my career in the private sector. By doing this, it also seems that my life vision has gotten an upgrade to HD and I see my family, my wife, Weena, my kids, Santi and Mike, my law practice, my work with ANC, my deanship, etc., similarly with greater clarity. Part of having an explicit set of values is that it enables you also to see yourself more clearly and once you get to do that, then seeing others, and becoming aware of the choices that are presented to you, will be far easier than before.
However, like needing to wear eyeglasses, having a set of core values and personal ethics is likewise a tremendous hassle. Your ethics and values will test your character. Especially, for someone as imperfect, vain and selfish as myself, I’m tested on a regular basis. It is important to remember that challenges, temptations and problems will inevitably present themselves and if you are to be true to your values, then you will have to make some difficult choices. For me, it has meant turning away a potential client who was incredibly affluent because I viewed that person as also being incredibly corrupt. It has meant saying no to work opportunities because it would have taken too much time away from my family. It has meant losing many “political friends” (admittedly, this term is an oxymoron).
But despite all the trouble and inconvenience of rediscovering my core values and ethics, of finding the right pair of ethical eyeglasses, they help me to see things clearly. And that is what’s truly important.
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Email adel.tamano@yahoo.com.