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ETHICS AND LEGALITY
Most will agree that legality and ethics are not the same thing. What may be ethical may
or may not be legal and vice versa.
For example:
1. An insurance salesperson more concerned with getting a larger commission as
opposed to selling the most suitable policy sells the wrong kind of policy to a
prospective client. This may be legal but unethical.
2. A young executive is driving over the speed limit, trying to reach the hospital with his
bleeding child in the back seat of his car. Hardly anyone would question the ethics of
breaking the law in this situation. It would be unethical not to get medical help to save
the kid's life, even if it meant breaking the law.
Legality establishes minimum standards, whereas ethics and values go beyond those
standards. Ethics and values are about fairness and justice. It is not about pleasing or
displeasing people. It is about respecting people's needs and rights.
PURPOSE OF LIFE
There are many kinds of desire. Desire for success, desire to do one's duty even at the
cost of pleasure. Desire for purpose. Something worth dying for which gives meaning to
life.
What good is it if you gain the whole world and lose your conscience?
A purposeless life is a living death. What is your purpose? Do you have one? Purpose
brings passion. Find or create a purpose and then pursue it with passion and
perseverance.
Every day we need to ask ourselves the question: "Am I getting any closer to my purpose
in life? Am I making this a better place to live?" If the answer is no, then I have just
wasted a day of my life. Life will reward us in proportion to our contribution.
The earlier we find a purpose in life, the better it is. It appears that the greatest challenge
comes in the unending search for the purpose of life. Not only as an individual but for our
families, organizations and country. Once our purpose and values are clear, conflicts
between self-interest and social obligations find a moral balance between themselves.
We become aware of when to take a stand. That is the time we start making the right
decisions for long-term gain rather than making the wrong decisions for short-term gain.
Wisdom and maturity lead to greater understanding of major issues.
Study as if you were to live forever. Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
--Mahatma Gandhi
We cannot help ourselves without helping others.
We cannot enrich our lives without enriching others.
We cannot prosper without bringing prosperity to others.
--Nanette Cole, Spellman College
Janette Cole once said, "Show me a person who is content with mediocrity and I will
show you a person destined for failure." Life is not a spectator sport. We cannot sit back

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and watch things happen. We need to find a purpose in order to make life meaningful
and then strive to achieve that purpose.

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