I love the Boston Red Sox and have since I was a boy. To this day, the sight of the famous Green Monster puts a smile on my face.
When we lived in Boston, one of our favorite things to do was to go to midweek night games at Fenway Park. One of our rituals was for me to meet my wife and kids before the game at the Old Capital Grille restaurant at the end of Newbury Street. We would have dinner, then take a couple of the bicycle-based “Pedicabs” five minutes to the park for the start of the game. We loved every bit of it.
One pregame dinner, though, stands out from all the others. For most of the dinner, nothing was unusual. We ordered our meals, my wife and I had a couple of glasses of wine, and I greeted a half dozen or so people that I knew in the financial services business who were there for dinner as well.
During the dinner, my wife and I somehow got on the topic of adoption. We spoke openly with our children about the fact that they were adopted from Guatemala. We adopted them when they were each about 13 months old. We often talked about how they may not have come from Mommy’s tummy, but they came from both of our hearts. We often prayed together to thank God for their birth moms in Guatemala and to thank them for allowing them to join our family. However we got on the topic this particular night, I don’t remember. I only know that they had heard our stories before and were sure to hear them again in the future.
The evening took an interesting turn when I asked for the bill. A waiter returned to tell me that the bill had been paid by an anonymous patron of the restaurant. Now normally, people might happily accept their good fortune in getting a free meal, proceed to thank the waiter, and head to the ball park. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
I explained to the waiter that while that was a nice gesture, I could not accept it. The issue was that given the position I held at my company, I could not accept any gifts from anyone who was seeking to do business with us. Such an act could be viewed as influencing me to do business with that person or firm. There were no exceptions, and since there were a number of people dining in the restaurant that night, I had to assume that it was one of them who was looking to pay our bill. After explaining the situation to our waiter, he offered to reverse the charges to the good Samaritan and return with a bill for me. I handed my business card to the waiter and asked him to pass it along to the good Samaritan should they want to reach out to discuss their nice gesture. Since I assumed the Samaritan was someone who already knew me and wanted to remain anonymous, I never expected to hear from them.
While we were waiting for the waiter to return, my son, who at the time was probably around 10 years old and was listening to my conversation, asked, “Dad why wouldn’t you just say thank you and accept the free meal? I mean no one from your firm is here to see what you are doing and you don’t know for sure it was someone in your business so why not just take the free meal and leave?”
I then asked my son, “Son, do you know what the word integrity means?”
“I think so. Doesn’t it mean to always try to do the right thing? But Dad, in this case, since you aren’t sure that you were doing anything wrong and there is no one from your work to see it, isn’t it okay to accept it?”
Good answer and a better question, I thought. I answered it this way: “Son, the easiest way to define the word ‘integrity’ is to think about it this way. ‘Integrity means always doing the right thing even if no one is looking.’”
As if a light bulb went off in his mind, he smiled and nodded his head up and down to show that he understood and began to collect his things to get ready to head to the park. On our way to the park, my wife and I discussed the situation at the restaurant and felt proud as parents to help teach our kids an important life lesson by having the event play out in real-time. It was a great evening by any measure.
The next day at work began like another. Meetings followed by meetings, interrupted by calls. And in between these, I tried to stay up on emails. It was during one of these checks that I read THE email. While over the years I have lost the actual email, it went something like this.
“Mr. Conroy, I am writing to you to let you know that I was the individual at the Capital Grille that offered to pay for your family’s meal last night. I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation that you were having with your family and wanted you to know that it made a huge impact on me.”
At that point, I was a bit confused because, in my opinion, the seminal conversation was the one I had with my son regarding integrity which occurred after the offer to pay the check. Curious, I read on.
“For the last several years, my wife and I have been trying to have a baby but to no avail. Recently, my wife began to advocate for adopting and created a strong argument to do so. The problem is that I wasn’t sure that I could ever love and accept as my own a baby that wasn’t my biological child. My resistance to adopting was beginning to cause real issues in our marriage, to the extent that I began to wonder whether the marriage would make it through this difficult period. But when I overheard you and your wife describing how your kids grew not in her belly but in your hearts, my perspective and outlook changed immediately. That is when as a gesture of thanks I offered to buy your dinner.”
At this point, I was literally in tears. It overwhelmed me to think that a conversation we had with our kids, one that we had had many times before, could have such a profound impact on someone.
I read on. “I was in the booth right next to you, so while I was disappointed to overhear that you had refused my offer to buy dinner, I was again blown away by the conversation with your son about integrity. It was at that moment, without finishing my meal that I left the restaurant to call my wife, tell her about what I had heard, how it had affected me, and how your conversation about integrity suddenly made me long to be an adoptive parent so I, too, could help shepherd a life forward. So, thank you and good luck.”
So, what is the moral of the story? I suppose there are a few, but to me the answer is simple. Always do the right thing and always speak from the heart, because when you do, you never know what good you will add to the world around you.
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