Good Intentions, Unintended Consequences
How many times in my life have I made a decision believing it was the right one, only to discover later that it had consequences I never expected?
I voted for Proposition 47 in 2014, officially called the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act. At the time, I
thought it made sense. It reclassified certain low-level, nonviolent property and drug offenses from
felonies to misdemeanors. I voted yes because I believed people who committed smaller crimes should have a better chance at getting jobs, rebuilding their lives, and moving forward without a felony following them forever.
That was my intention.
But over time, I began to see outcomes I had not fully considered. Some people figured out how to work the system. Theft under a certain amount seemed to carry fewer consequences than I had imagined.
That was not what I had in mind when I voted for it.
Good intentions. Unintended consequences.
Last year, we partnered with the state to provide e-bikes for 50 individuals in Merced. I thought this would help low-income families get to work, appointments, school, and other important places more easily. And in many ways, it did.
But within days, some bikes were stolen. Some people did not have a safe place to store them. Others
were not prepared for the responsibility of riding safely, and a few got into accidents.
Again: good intentions, unintended consequences.
There are dozens of decisions I have made that I believed were good at the time, only to later realize the
outcomes were more complicated than I expected. I wonder how many decisions all of us make after agonizing, debating, praying, researching, and trying to do the right thing, only to discover later that we missed something.
Do we take time to look back and evaluate our process? Do we learn from what happened? Do we ask
who was helped, who was hurt, and what we failed to see?
We all make decisions every day. Some are big. Some are small. Some seem almost insignificant. But every decision carries an outcome, and we need to do our best to make the wisest decision we can with
the information we have.
What I am learning is that I need wise counsel. I need to listen to people who do not agree with me. I need people around me who ask hard questions, challenge my assumptions, and help me see what I may be missing. None of us should make important decisions alone.
In some Native American cultures, there is a teaching that decisions should be considered in light of
their impact on the next seven generations. That kind of wisdom feels especially important today. We live in a world that moves at lightning speed, and too often our decisions are made quickly, loudly, and without enough reflection.
Maybe we need to slow down.
Maybe we need to ask better questions.
Maybe we need to remember that our decisions are not just for us. They shape the lives of people we
may never meet and generations we may never see.