I was on my way home from work last night and I saw a pet carrier on the side of the road. This wasn’t a situation where a pet carrier might have fallen out of a truck or anything. This carrier had been set, with purpose, beside a sign made out of yellow construction paper with “We buy houses” written on it in big, black Sharpie letters. The two were unrelated, but the universe had brought them together.

As I drove past the carrier, I tried to peek inside to make sure it was empty. I didn’t get a good look. Thus began the two-minute inner monologue that ran me through several lines of thought and ended with me going back and checking the pet carrier for an animal.

While in that debate, I drove about five blocks. I talked to myself about the quality of people. I challenged myself to believe in the best of humanity, that no person would just leave an animal in a small carrier on the side of a busy street in the cold and the rain.

Then I asked myself if there could possibly be a person like that. In my imagination, yes, yes there could be.

By now, I’d figured there was a pretty good chance that there was, in fact, an animal in that carrier who was hours away from freezing or starving to death. But I hadn’t completely convinced myself that going back was the best thing to do. I weighed the potential that someone else would walk by and see the carrier. Someone else would help that poor dying dog or cat. Someone else would do something.

I minored in psychology in college. From the six or so classes I ended up taking, I remember a handful of useful tidbits and factoids. One of these tidbits is related to the Bystander Effect. In summary, The Bystander Effect says that when someone sees something that needs to be done or observes someone who needs help and does nothing. They do this because they think that someone else will do it or has already started to do it or has done it.

In my car, on my way home from a long day of work, I did not want to find a dying animal in a carrier. Even more so, I didn’t want to become a bystander. While I drove on, waiting for a good opportunity to perform a legal U-turn, I started down a different, but related, train of thought. Was I only doing this because I wanted to be able to say I was doing the right thing, or did I genuinely want to do the right thing? The fact that I had a mini debate about doing the right thing made me wonder really hard about my motives. I had to wonder, am I a good person, or do I just want to be a good person.

And as I drove back to discover that there was no dog or cat in that dirty carrier by the street outside of the Jack in the Box, I came to the conclusion that I am both. I am a good person for doing what needed to be done. As Michael Jackson says in his song about mirrors, I represent the change I want to see in people. Instead of thinking that someone else would look in the carrier, I looked. It took a whole two minutes.

I found this to be a defining moment in my life. Not a huge one, like my choice to move to Washington, but it turned out to be important all the same. Maybe even more important than I realize right now as I write this. I make hundreds of little choices throughout my day. I choose what to ignore, what to enact upon, and what influence I have on the world. Because chose to turn around and make sure that another living creature wasn’t suffering inside of that carrier, I polished my mettle. I made the characteristics of myself that I want to believe in and have stand out, the good ones, stronger and brighter. And, believe it or not, knowing that I hold true to what I value, that I can act upon my base instincts and trust the outcome, shows me that even though I do want to be a good person, I am one already. And despite the fact that I am a good person, I can still want to be one.

Thanks for spending time with me, reader. Until next time.