Brack: We can all do better

All of us are imperfect creatures.

We see these imperfections every day in the politician who twists facts or outright lies. Or in the greedy businessman who squeezes someone to make another penny. And in the person who is having a bad day and yells at someone for no reason.

Face it: We can all do better.

But the hurly-burly of modern life with its tweets and calls and interruptions and reels and posts and doomscrolling and vicious whatnot seem to make us forget the things we learned as kids at home, church and school.

With summer and time off ahead, you might want to take stock and reflect on how things are going in your life. The recent passing of my father reminded me that I should reexamine lessons learned from him and my mother as a boy in south Georgia and as a high schooler in Atlanta.

Here are some of the lessons they shared by setting good examples that might spur summertime reflections:

First: Do the right thing. It might be hard. It might be unpopular. But you won’t lose sleep at night for making a good decision that doesn’t hurt others.

Second: Along those lines, help people when you can in the way that they need help – or might not even know will help. You might pay it forward for someone. Or you could connect a person to someone else who might help – and find out later that the intro opened a new world.

Third: Pay your bills. This applies to governments as well as families. It’s pitiful that the U.S. government operates as if the checkbook is always open. It needs some fiscal discipline and should be required – at a minimum – to have the balanced budget that many states like South Carolina have.

Fourth: Have an open mind. Without it, you let in hate, fear and all sorts of deadly sins.

Fifth: Little things matter. Get the details right. If you can’t get the little things right, most will wonder whether you can even do the big things at all.

Sixth: Support American democracy. The rule of law matters. Too many people are getting away from these two fundamentals over which the nation fought wars. Don’t dishonor our heroes by slipping away from “a more perfect union” into autocracy.

Seventh: Let people know what you think, but don’t be ugly about it. A corollary might be to keep your mouth shut if you can’t find at least an iota of good to share.

Eighth: Be kind. This might be hard when you’re having a bad day, but it’s a good guide every day.

As a related aside, here is something that’s framed in my office thanks to my dad. These are his 15 maxims for a newspaperman, but they have broader applications like those above: