High Road

So I often ponder the saying, what do you do when nobody is looking. It is easy to do what is right when we know we're being watched, but do we do the right thing when no one is watching or might ever know? I don't live up to this all the time, but I am daily trying to become a better person. Today, I had a simple almost silly moment of this. As part of my AmeriCorps position with Habitat we're taking weekly tests on our construction knowledge. We're suppose to have read the construction manual. (As I said to them, if we'd gotten it at the beginning of the year, I would have read it, but it is not my top priority to sit down and read this large document at this point) So, I've been floating fairly successfully through the quizzes based on my own knowledge having been on the sites since Sept. Today I came across a question that was really only answerable if one had read the manual. Apparently an exact copy of a graph in the handbook. I made a comment when I came upon the question (after I'd just kidded someone else's silly question) about needing a calculator, to be informed it was in the handbook, etc. I knew one of the three answers because it applied to the style house I've built with Habitat. I had no clue on the other two. Except for my teammate. The one I'd just given a hard time to for his silly question. Muttered the answer in a cough-like creatively random sentence. I figured out his meaning, based on what knowledge I did have of the question and figured out the correct answers. But as I sat there staring at them I couldn't do it. Grades don't matter except for pride. These quizzes are simply tools for learning. I'll forever know the answer to this question and putting those answers down might have given me a close to perfect quiz. I just couldn't do it. What good would it have done? I couldn't be proud of my near perfect score if I'd cheated.
I'll be the first to say, I don't always take the high road. But for a few minutes today, I did. I hope to say that more often as my life goes on.