The Road Less Traveled

With most circumstances in life, you are faced with two options: taking the high road, or the low road.
Usually taking the high road involves a decision of ethics or morality.
Sometimes taking the high road, though, is much more difficult than simply making a moral or an ethical decision.
Sometimes taking the high road means saving face, for someone else.
Sometimes the difficult decisions you have to make will be for the better good of an organization or group, and will involve changing someone’s responsibilities, removing them from their responsibilities, or confronting them over an error in their life or their responsibilities.
As the one who has been charged with ultimate decision making, or simply with being the bearer of bad news, you will often take the full brunt of the frustrations and offenses related to the decisions or confrontations made.
When you’re in that position and confronting the person effected by the decision or situation, you usually represent the final step in the process to that person, and will be the one to carry the blame in their mind.
Before the final decision or confrontation, it is likely that there has been many other people involved up to this point. You just happen to be the last link in the chain, and with your position, the unlucky one to be the bringer of bad news.
The decision may also be based on personal factors outside of the effected person’s control, that prevent them from carrying out their responsibilities or coming to grips with an error in their life.
When you must confront this person, it becomes SO tempting to share with them all of the factors involved in the final decision. But to do so would require throwing many of your coworkers and/or friends under the bus. Not only would you be potentially ruining your relationship with the one your confronting, but everyone else in the decisions’ relationship with them as well. This is simply unnecessary and not fair to the rest of the group involved in the decision.
Sometimes it’s also tempting to point out the personal flaws in the person you’re confronting in order to pass the blame back to them instead of it resting on you. This also is not fair to them and could cause a lifetime of confusion and doubt.
So the point of all of this is to say that sometimes taking the high road, will appear to some, as if you are actually taking the low road. And that sometimes being the good guy (by protecting the relationships and feelings of many), will appear to some, as though you are the bad guy.
You can’t always win. You can’t always appear to take the high road, but you can sleep well at night knowing that you actually did the right thing and did indeed take the high road. But no one needs to know about it. God above knows what you have done.