Paved with good intentions…

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Poets, philosophers, and saints have been credited for that phrase. Nobody knows where it came from; I heard it first from my father. 

“But I didn’t mean to” didn’t cut it with dad when I’d hurt someone, or didn’t do the right thing. My intention didn’t matter if my actions didn’t match it.   

That lesson has stayed with me, though life has moderated it some. When I speak with groups about intention and harm, I always have a smooth stone in my pocket, which I pull out and hold in my palm. That stone represents my intention not to cause harm to others. I wouldn’t start a day without it, I say. My intention is precious. It’s essential.  

And of course I cause harm anyway, because I am human and honestly ignorant – or I know but I forget, or anger or fear overrides my intention, or I get sloppy with my words. 

When that happens, I pocket my intention, because it matters far less than the harm I’ve caused. What matters then is accountability, starting with what activist Mia Mingus calls a quality apology, an apology that “acknowledges the impact [of your actions], no matter your intention.”

It’s so easy to say I didn’t mean to when my words or actions result in harm. I once said I felt “gypped” to a Roma woman whose people for eons have been seen as thieves. When she reminded me of that centuries-old slight, I gasped, “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way!”

That put the focus back on me, my feelings, my intentions, not her hurt. 

Mingus suggests that moments of hard are not times to “explain or wallow in your intent.” They’re times, Mingus writes,  “to tend to the impact your actions (or inactions) had on someone else. This is a chance to practice care, empathy, and compassion.”  

But my intentions were good, I think – that should count. Mingus agrees, writing, “The difference between someone purposefully setting out to harm you, vs. someone who harmed you unintentionally is important.”  

I think of it this way: if I stick my foot out at the wrong moment and someone falls, and they’re injured and clearly in pain or distress, I wouldn’t focus on not meaning to hurt them. I’d say I’m sorry and find out what hurts, then get busy with bandages or ice.  

Care, empathy, and compassion.

And if I were standing nearby and saw the fall, and the person who fell complained in their pain, would I say, “hey, ease up - he didn’t mean it!”?

Philosopher Myisha Cherry says that will only deepen the harm by dismissing it. “You might tell her about an injustice you experienced,” Cherry writes, [then] she makes you doubt your experience [when] she says, “he didn’t mean it like that.”

Intent pales in the presence of pain. It also doesn’t matter if I can relate to or understand the reason the person feels harmed. It doesn’t matter whether or not I agree that the person in front of me should feel harmed.  

Still, because I want to be someone who doesn’t cause harm, when someone tells me that I have, I can start to feel badly about myself. I don’t like that feeling – so I insist on my good intention. I have, in the past, dismissed others’ harm so that I don’t have to feel badly. 

With practice, though, I’ve learned to keep that defensiveness to myself. Otherwise I will lose an opportunity for repair and for the person I’ve harmed, a small respite from age-old, exhausting, diminishing harms. 

Social psychologists have reported that apologies offered after declarations of good intent are less likely to be met with forgiveness, trust, or repaired relationship. They say that’s ironic, but I’m not so sure.  I/they didn’t mean to offers nothing acknowledging impact. It doesn’t signal that it won’t happen again.  It offers no respite.

It’s not always easy, but truly it costs nothing except effort to offer a quality apology when my actions result in harm, to listen to their experience, to commit to the work of not causing that harm again.

That’s why I keep that stone in my pocket. My intention matters, absolutely, and when I cause harm despite it, the harm matters more.

Lucinda Garthwaite, ILI Founder and Executive Director