Great question… some of my friends and I were discussing this not too long ago, and I’ve actually been on a bit of a personal quest to consolidate my own moral code of late.
I tend to go out of my way to accommodate the needs of people I love. I’ve lost hundreds of hours of sleep and gone through a great deal of suffering to make sure that my friends were okay when they had problems. I’ve never once asked for, or even expected anything in return.
I had a dream not too long ago that I climbed to the top of a mountain and an ancient man told me that if I ever get as old as he is, I should have lived my life not like the ever-changing ocean waves, but like the mountain, and I should let the world climb atop me and rest in my valleys.
That really stuck out in my mind, and I remembered it in the morning. A lot of my friends tell me that I get “walked on” by my other friends and family, and that they are “taking advantage of me.” This dream I had just reinforced what I always believed about myself: That I’m meant to be a stoic altruist. I strongly believe that even if everyone is just taking advantage of me, and even if nobody ever thanks me for staying up all night listening to them cry, or driving for hours to talk to them when they are having an emotional breakdown across the state, that I should keep doing what I do anyway. I believe that it isn’t worth the risk to not help them, because if they are taking advantage of me, and I take the time to let them, nothing of value is really lost, but if they truly do need me, and I’m not there to help them, then I have failed.
So I will try my very best to be like the mountain and unflinchingly do whatever the people in my life need to keep them happy and at least give them a smidgen of peace or relief when they need it. Couldn’t the world use more dauntless listeners anyway?
That sums up my moral code.